Swimmer

A searching new collection from America’s philosopher-poet. John Koethe in his tenth volume of poetry investigates the capricious nature of everyday life “the late-night jazz great sex and all / The human shit defining what we are.” His poems—always dynamic and in process never static or complete—luxuriate in the questions that punctuate the most humdrum of routines rendering a robust portrait of an individual: complicated quotidian and resounding with truth. The Swimmer argues that this “energizes everything”: life’s trivialities surprises and disappointments and the “terrible feeling of being just about to fall.”