A Man with a Rake is an auspicious launch- Kooser, in his eighties now,  is a master of American letters (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and twice the US Poet Laureate), and he's well-known for his poems about life in the middle of the country.

However, though he writes about farms and barns and fields and kitchens, Kooser isn't embroidering nostalgic cliches or quaint memes of farm life. Instead, his poems wryly overturn these easy images and create fresh, surprising images from what some might perceive is a quiet life in Nebraska.

A Man with A Rake is for people who love poetry that is a pleasure to read. It's for readers who like being transported to rural landscapes- to farms and sheds full of antique tools and hay forks, to stretches of wheat fields, warehouses, poultry houses and lonely gas stations. This book will thrill  Kooser fans and poetry collectors who want a slender, beautiful chapbook that they can savor in one sitting. People who love Jim Harrison and books about How-to-build-a-shed will love this, as well as people who would rather read than rake a pile of leaves.