The subjects and imagery of Ted Kooser's poetry unmistakably bear the influence of his environment, the Great Plains, but Kooser insists he is not a regionalist writer. However, until the University of Pittsburgh Press published Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems in 1980, Kooser had published four of his books with Nebraska presses and the others with such small houses as Cold Mountain Press in Texas, Solo Press in California, and Pentagram Press in Wisconsin. Hence, Kooser's audience remained narrow and primarily local. Furthermore, despite a favorable notice by William Cole in the 2 November 1974 issue of Saturday Review, Kooser continued to write without much critical notice beyond midwestern little magazines, thus reinforcing the notion of his merely regional appeal. Then, with Sure Signs, critics in national publications began to recognize, as Peter Stitt said in the Georgia Review (Fall 1980), that Kooser is "an authentic poet of the American people...