John Koethe at the New School [by Liz Howort]

Proust was in the air Tuesday night (3/ 23/ 10) as the distinguished
philosopher and poet John Koethe read from his new collection, Ninety-Fifth Street.  The book is defined by “memory poems,” which explore
the visceral recollection of people and places, and the overlapping language of
such moments, ranging from Plato to Peggy Lee. 
The book begins with “Chester,” perhaps the only poem ever written that
nods to Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and a late cat: “Mere being/ Is
supposed to be enough, without the intricate/ Evasions of a mystery or offstage
tragedy.” 

Koethe read “On Happiness,” and noted that while the poem
mentions many philosophers, “it doesn’t really matter if you know the
references.”  Koethe enters the poem to
ask his own question after the philosophers take leave, “Why do we feel the
need to create ourselves/ Through what we choose, instead of simply sinking
without a trace/ Into the slow stream of time?” 
In “Ninety-Fifth Street,” a long, narrative poem, Koethe ponders his own
“stream of time,” including a dinner party in 1966 with John Ashbery, Kenneth
Koch and Frank O’Hara.  As “the narrative
of the night dissolved,” the play they intended to finish remained unfinished, and
the progression through time is marked by “new epicenters, with new casts of
characters.”  As Koethe considers himself
in the present, he also contextualizes his mentor:  “…now John’s practically become/ A national
treasure, and whenever I look up I think I see him/ Floating in the sky like
the Cheshire Cat.”  Koethe seals his
youth and the present with the evanescent sky: “the noise of the rain and
memories of rain.”   

During the Q&A the moderator, David Lehman, asked Koethe
how long it took him to write this poem. 
Koethe said he worked on it every day for six weeks. He discovered the memory form,
a variant of “Proustian recall,” six or seven years ago. 
“Sally’s Hair,” the title poem of his previous book, was his first
memory poem; Koethe considers these poems more concrete than his other more
discursive works.  Lehman ventured that
“On Happiness” is an expository poem, almost like an essay in verse.  Lehman and Koethe also discussed the
connections between poetry and philosophy, and Koethe commented, “In poetry you
have a great freedom to inhabit these [philosophical] ideas.  You enter into them and they seize you.”  And at times, an idea or memory seizes you
without warning: “A delicious pleasure had invaded me…filling me with a
precious essence: or rather this essence was not merely inside me, it was me.”

Liz Howort

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