John Koethe’s The Swimmer, has just been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His previous books include North Point North: New and Selected (2002), Ninety-Fifth Street (2009), which received the Lenore Marshall Award, and ROTC Kills (2012).
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2018
Walking Backwards
You notice them on campuses in early April, the maître d's Of the future showing customers to their tables. It looks so hopeful: Come join me, realize your dreams here […]
Poetry
Mar/Apr 2018
Thinking about Death
I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me. — Mark Strand In memoriam Lucretius has an unconvincing argument For why death doesn't matter, since I won't […]
Poetry
Jan/Feb 2015
La Durée
Proust read Bergson, then he wrote his poem. I thought if I read Bergson too I’d figure out a way To say what I’ve been gesturing at all my life […]
Poetry
Spring 2012
Watchful Waiting
Let's see what happens. I'm waiting at the bar at Gene's, a place On West Eleventh Street, just down the street From the Larchmont Hotel, where I usually stay When […]
Poetry
Summer 2009
These Magic Moments
We were sitting on the terrace of a small hotel On a side street in a town we’d never visited before. I wrote this down: They drive around the square […]
Poetry
Fall 2008
The Distinguished Thing
Here it is at last, the distinguished thing. — Henry James It needn't start with reading —Though it does—but with an opening So sweet and self-sustaining that it lasts forever, […]
Young Writers
Winter 2006
The Unlasting
I Like a vain man practicing a vain artBorn out of failure—not the grand failureOf the Will or the Imagination, But on a more human scale: what happened?What happened […]
Poetry
Autumn 2004
Sally’s Hair
It's like living in a light bulb, with the leaves Like filaments and the sky a shell of thin, transparent glass Enclosing the late heaven of a summer day, a […]
Poetry
Autumn 2004
The Middle of Experience
My fear and my ambition: that my life Remain the same, unchanging in its versions, Constant as the street I lived on where the Houses bode their dreams beneath a […]
Poetry
Autumn 2004
This Morning
To see things as they are is hard, But leaving them alone is harder; Snow in patches in the yard, The vacuum in the sky, and in the soul The […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Dellius’s Boat
In that dark boat, that bears us all away From here to where no one comes back from ever. —Horace So the journey resumes as it began, With the raw […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Aus Einem April
Spring arrived again, with puzzles in the air, And mysteries being debated by the breeze. I felt the season fold around me like a glove, As line by line the […]
Poetry
Winter 2001
Life under Conditions of Uncertainty
The problem is always how to decide, Given the limited information at one's disposal. "Decide" may be the wrong word, And as for "information," limited or otherwise, Think about the […]
John Koethe
John Koethe’s most recent book is ROTC Kills. His previous book, Ninety-Fifth Street, received the Lenore Marshall Award. An excerpt from his poem “La Durée” can be found here. The […]