Ted Kooser's 'Skater'

In the ten seconds that it took me to skim over Ted Kooser’s “Skater”, I saw the ice stretching for miles beneath the silent clouds in the distance of a gray morning. The image of a young attractive woman, dressed in a lean North Face jacket and a mere black speck against the winter panorama also came to mind. As someone who has experienced the pains and gains of figure skating, I felt a personal connection to “Skater”. I too, have suffered the gelid nip at the fingers and cheeks, fought the fear of jumping and of falling, taken leaps of faith from wedges of dangerous metal. I could easily relate to the mental imagery, and so I chose this poem out of nostalgia and the hope that my emotional attachment to ice skating would help in my analysis.

The same metaphors and imagery capture a previously unnoticed elegance in ice skating, which in turn represents the great moments in life where fear of death and aging vanish. Much of Ted Kooser’s poems make a half turn in the kaleidoscope of ordinary matter, changing the way we might see a blue jay landing on a tree or someone washing the dishes. The speaker in “Skater” may actually be Kooser during a moment in his life when he witnessed a girl skating on the ice. In his “Poetry Home Repair Manual” he asserts that inspirations for his poems come from a key observation and a few choice words that paint the essence of the poem (Kooser

I spent a long time breaking in my own Black Beauties, a leathery pair of skates that gave me calluses before I could jump properly. The air is cold, the ice is colder still, and landing on a blade hurts like no other. There is a lot of discomfort in ice skating, and constant fear of sharp failure dulls confidence. Nonetheless, I made the connection between the skater ‘growing up’ into a woman and the jump, because I spent many hours myself trying to land my axle. I was glad that my background research strengthened my previous analysis; given Kooser’s perspectives on aging and time, it would make sense that he would choose a nimble ice skater to represent elegance, the perfect way to freeze mortality.

I think Kooser uses “Skater” to present a plain and beautiful truth. Vivid imagery conveys the power and elegance of the skater without us having to try or stretch our imaginations. For some, the seedless grape is enough to capture the ice skater’s experience, perhaps invoking a smile or fond memory in the reader. For those compelled to explore the deeper flavors behind the small and sweet poem, we find a mortality and time beautifully compressed into a single Waltz