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Bennett Meares
Professor Beckham
English 102
21 September 2015
Channeled Discovery
“Abandoned Farmhouse” by Ted Kooser presents the aftermath of a family afflicted by
the farming crisis of the 1980s. The family in focus never directly appears in the poem, and
nowhere but the title does Kooser specifically mention that the house had been abandoned.
Rather, the narrator leads the reader to conclude by way of deductive reasoning that the home
had been deserted. Kooser executes this tactic by use of imperfect rhyme, alliteration, and
personification.
Despite its seemingly uniform structure, “Abandoned Farmhouse” is an open verse poem,
especially in rhyme, and Ted Kooser uses this freedom to direct the reader on a self-driven pace.
The first two lines end in shoes and house—a near rhyme. This trend continues with man and sun
(4, 6); dusty and sun (6), shelves and preserves (10, 13); child and tire (11, 12); hole and road
(14, 16); house, fields, and haste (17, 18, 20); and jars and yard (19, 21); though lines 22 and 23
end with a perfect rhyme between cow and plow. Kooser’s deliberate pacing of these slant
rhymes smoothens the reading of the poem all the while maintaining its free verse structure.
Readers follow these imperfect rhymes from line to line, and with each passing line, marked by
pseudo-rhymes, they discover for themselves the narrator’s message about the past troubles
which drove out the missing family.
Like with his use of imperfect rhymes, Ted Kooser regulates the flow of his poem
through alliteration. He ends the first line with a smooth transition using the words says, size, and
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shoes, and throughout the poem, he uses alliteration in conjunction with near rhymes to slide one
line into the next. Kooser uses this approach in phrases such as “good, God-fearing man” (4),
“Bible with a broken back” (5), “tractor tire” (12), “plum preserves” (13), “sealed in the cellar”
(14), “went wrong” (17, 24), and “still-sealed” (19). Usage of these words is not crucial to
communicating the message, but Kooser’s application of this technique strengthens the intensity
within readers’ unraveling of the hidden meaning. Alliteration paired with near rhyming
rhythmically runs readers into the right resolution, a destination set by use of personification.
In “Abandoned Farmhouse,” Ted Kooser best develops the narrator’s perspective through
personification. In nearly every line, the speaker feeds bits of information about the family that
lived in the home and applies the listed trait to an object on the property. For example, the
opening phrase “He was a big man” is immediately attributed to the man’s shoes in the phrase
“says the size of his shoes” (1). Kooser brings to life shoes, a bed, a Bible, fields, a bedroom
wall, a sandbox, jars, rags, a road, an empty house, and stones by granting these objects human
characteristics. Together, these items tell the story of a small, poor family which forsake its
agrarian lifestyle. All that remains to signify their past occupancy is the rundown shell of a
home, and its contents as well as the surrounding property, once given human qualities, illustrate
the family’s struggles and departure. The reader can deduce for himself the family’s plight by
processing the perspectives of the personified property, which Kooser aids with rhyme and
alliteration.
Given that “Abandoned Farmhouse” is largely based upon reader interpretation, there is
no clear resolution for the family, though Ted Kooser nudges along readers into the nature of the
family’s fate. The tense fear, best expressed in the third stanza, arises from the stories of the
objects around the home, and it is the reader’s responsibility to uncover the family’s grim
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outcome. In total, Ted Kooser leads readers to discover meaning in his poem by use of devices
such as imperfect rhyme, alliteration, and personification.
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Works Cited
Kooser, Ted. “Abandoned Farmhouse.” Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh, 1980. N. pag. Print.