Ted Kooser’s Use of Adjectives

Ellen Bryant Voigt calls for a rethinking of adjectives in The Flexible Lyric. Using Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar” as an example, she makes a case for the value of adjectives, particularly in lyric poetry. She suggests that “adjectives not only annex precision and clarity, for more exact meaning, and add nuance and resonance, for evocation of emotion; in their amplifications of tone they acknowledge the poet’s subjective presence in the poem” (51). While it is a common in the consideration of contemporary poetry to question adjectives, wisdom seems to call for balance in their usage. But balance suggests a judgment call that is often difficult to make. A study of Ted Kooser’s use of adjectives in the poems in Weather Central will show just how difficult that judgment call really is.

The title poem of that volume is a good example of the resonance of well-chosen adjectives. The adjectives carry the extended metaphor that compares the delivery of the TV weather report to the grooming of a fine horse. The size and nature of the horse are conveyed by the adjectives “massive, dappled” when the narrator talks of the “flank of the continent” and “enormous Appaloosa” when the “mare of weather” is figured. In both cases, these adjectives make the figure more specific and increase the valence of the vehicle employed. The use of “cloudy” in “cloudy whorls that drift like galaxies across its hide” is both literal and figurative. On one hand the condition of the sky is denoted while on the other hand the darker patches of hair on the Appaloosa mare is connoted. Even the use of “splendid” to modify “order” increases the sense of knighthood figured in the “cavalier” bearing of the weatherman. When “horsefly’s” modifies “touch,” in the sense of “shudder running just under the skin,” the figure is given a level of specificity that would have been lost without the additional metaphorical modifier. The vibrancy of the extended trope is sufficient to carry both the heavier adjectives and the weaker concluding adjectives chosen. The dynamic of the powerful horse makes “no sudden” a necessary modifier for “moves,” and the effect of the trope allows the clichéd “peaceful moonlight” to modify “night” at the end of the poem.

In much the same way, the adjectives in “Peeling a Potato” carry the comparison with Pablo Casals. The speaker calls the potato he is peeling a “fat little cello” from which he peels “long white chords.” The adjectives in both figures function as part of the metaphor themselves and seem needed to help the reader visualize both tenor and vehicle. In the second stanza, adjectives are used sparingly with modifiers occurring only in the last two lines of the sestet. Because he is not famous like Casals, the speaker hears only “the hesitant clapping/ of a few moist hands.” In this case the adjectives “hesitant” and “few moist” carry the humor of the kitchen/amphitheater comparison.

A purist might argue that “solo” is not needed in the third stanza to modify “variations/ of J. S. Bach,” but it seems necessary to heighten the connection between the lone peeler of potatoes and the solo cellist. By the same token “tight” is needed to modify “lipped” to suggest the dual concentration of peeler and soloist. In fact, “tight” functions almost as part of a compound noun in the figure. The adjectives most open for debate in the poem are “handsome” and “old” in the final image “handsome old hands,” but here is a bid for resonance. The figure doubles back to the extended metaphor of the poem. With its juxtaposition to “inspiration,” the image recalls the Pablo Casals named in the first line. The image moves through the humor of the poem to suggest a shared dignity and life rhythm in work and in music.

“A Stoneware Crock,” a poem which uses the image of Red Wing pottery as a transitory device, is primarily a mood piece. Its dominant suggestion is that an object out of the past can evoke an immediate sense of that past or can transport its holder to the past. The scene that is evoked is dependent upon adjectives for its energy and immediacy. The reader is invited to fly on the wings of the “old five-gallon crock” to the “gray-green backwater valley of pickles.” Rich sensory images freighted with adjectives describe the scene. The poem describes its kitchens with the adjective “sugary,” and its buckets of cucumbers with “galvanized.” The smell of the cucumbers is compared in a simile to “freshly brushed hair.” Sight, taste, feel, and smell are all figured with the adjectives in the second stanza.

In the third, the adjectives “red,” “mason,” and “linoleum” bring the scene further into view visually. The comparison of the “big women” to “upright pianos” increases the sense of the movement and activity in the fourth stanza, and the “steady boil” of their gossip and the “packed jars” set to cool heightens the sense of energy in the scene. While the description could have been reduced to the nouns, the adjectives add color, warmth, and vibrancy to the scene evoked.

For the most part, Kooser seems to use adjectives in three different ways: (1) to carry the dominant metaphorical structure of the poem, (2) to bring a sense of specificity or immediacy into the descriptive narration of a poem, and (3) to express an unexpected contrast. While the first two of these patterns are used in “Weather Central,” “Peeling a Potato,” and “A Stoneware Crock,” the third pattern can be seen in “The Mouse in the Piano.”

The music the mouse plays is “new and remarkable,” and it is played in “morning darkness.” The unexpected, a technique that establishes the tension in the poem, is figured in the adjectives. The sound that a mouse makes in a piano is hardly music, but it is certainly not new or remarkable under most circumstances. The contrast in “morning darkness” is equally unexpected as is the “perfect concentration” with which the “tentative notes” and “intimate chords” are played by the mouse. Even the “hundred years” in which the music has remained secret before being released by the mouse has the unreality of its hyperbolic adjective. This technique of using adjectives that contrast with the nouns they modify or contrast with the dominant mood of the poem adds humor and causes the mind to reevaluate the circumstance being described. At the end of the poem, the speaker offers one more seeming contradiction.
the silvery strings--
a great abstraction
dumb and human—
fall all night like moonbeams
through the lifting dust.

The “silvery strings,” a metaphorical construction that describes the experience rather than the strings of the piano, have fallen through the night providing an ethereal experience for the residents of the house. The adjective “silvery” and the adjective “great” are used to heighten the sense of this experience and in so doing draw an incredible contrast between cause and effect.