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    Ninety-fifth Street: Poems
    Ninety-fifth Street: Poems
    Ninety-fifth Street: Poems
    Ebook84 pages57 minutes

    Ninety-fifth Street: Poems

    By John Koethe

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    About this ebook

    A Harper Perennial paperback original, Ninety-fifth Street is a beautiful new collection of poems by John Koethe, acclaimed by poet Edward Hirsch as an heir to Wallace Stevens. In this, his eighth book of poems, Koethe, the author of North Point North and Falling Water, offers readers the reflections of a poet in mid-life, an “aging child of 62,” passionately engaged with the world yet drawn to meditate on memory, time, and the mysteries of human existence.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 8, 2009
    ISBN9780061959776
    Ninety-fifth Street: Poems
    Author

    John Koethe

    John Koethe is distinguished professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the first Poet Laureate of Milwaukee. His collections include Falling Water, which won the Kingsley-Tufts Award, North Point North, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Ninety-fifth Street, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2011, he received a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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    Reviews for Ninety-fifth Street

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    • 5/5
      The annual Beall Poetry Festival at Baylor University has become an event I eagerly await as each spring rolls around. This year was no exception, despite the fact I had only the slightest familiarity with only one of the three poets, Carol Frost. However, the poet that impressed and inspired me the most was John Koethe.His poems tell stories, in plain language, with gentle strokes of humor, pathos, and intelligence -- all with profound insights into human nature and the creative mind. I even found an epithet for my own thesis, which Prof. Koethe enthusiastically gave me permission to use.The epithet comes from the opening lines of the title poem of Ninety-Fifth Street. Koethe wrote,“Words can bang around in your headForever, if you let them and you give them room.I used to love poetry, and mostly I still do, Though sometimes ‘I, too, dislike it.’ There mustbe something real beyond the fiddle and perfunctoryConsolations and the quarrels -- as of courseThere is, though what it is is difficult to say.” (72)I was thrilled to recognize the interior quote as the words of Marianne Moore, the eccentric 20th century poet, editor, librarian, and teacher. Her apartment was moved from New York City -- following her death in 1972 -- and reassembled at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. So, I have a close personal connection to her work.Like Moore, Koethe’s poetry is simple, yet profound with wit and irony. He tells stories and -- in the telling -- reveals philosophy and the inner workings of the human psyche.Furthermore, a measure of irony lay in my selection of this epithet. To paraphrase Koethe, “I used to hate poetry, but now I mostly love it, although some I still dislike.”The title poem from Sally’s Hair is a good example of the story-telling talent of Koethe. He writes,“I took the train back from Poughkeepsie to New YorkAnd in the Port Authority, there at the Suburban Transit window,She asked, ‘Is this the bus to Princeton?’ -- which it was.‘Do you know Geoffrey Love?’ I said I did. She had the blondest hair,Which fell across her shoulders, and a dress of almost phosphorescent blue.She liked Ayn Rand. We went to the Village for a drink, Where I contrived to miss the last bus to New Jersey, and at 3 a.m. weWalked around and found a cheap motel I hadn’t enough money forAnd fooled around on the dilapidated couch. An early morning bus(She’d come to see her brother), dinner plans and missed connectionsAnd a message on his door about the Jersey shore. Next dayA summer dormitory room, my roommates gone: ‘Are you,’ she asked,‘A hedonist?’ I guessed so. Then she had to catch her plane.Sally -- Sally Roche. She called that night from Florida,And I never heard from her again…” (69-70)Hearing the poet read this poem impressed me with the power of his words, and his voice reinforced the story-telling nature of his work. I can only begin to hope to write something as touching, sincere, and emotional in my own workLastly, a poignant piece from North Point North, “The Little Boy.”“I want to stay here awhile, now that there came to meThis other version of what passes in my life for time.The little boy is in his sandbox. Mom and DadAre puttering around in the backyard.” (116)I have to stop here, because memories of my own childhood are welling up inside, and I have gone on long enough. If these three samples don’t tempt you, you have not discovered the depth, the breath, the beauty of well-crafted poetry. 15 stars -- 5 each!--Jim, 4/3/10

    Book preview

    Ninety-fifth Street - John Koethe

    I

    CHESTER

    Wallace Stevens is beyond fathoming, he is so strange; it is as if he had a morbid secret he would rather perish than disclose…

    —Marianne Moore to William Carlos Williams

    Another day, which is usually how they come:

    A cat at the foot of the bed, noncommittal

    In its blankness of mind, with the morning light

    Slowly filling the room, and fragmentary

    Memories of last night’s video and phone calls.

    It is a feeling of sufficiency, one menaced

    By the fear of some vague lack, of a simplicity

    Of self, a self without a soul, the nagging fear

    Of being someone to whom nothing ever happens.

    Thus the fantasy of the narrative behind the story,

    Of the half-concealed life that lies beneath

    The ordinary one, made up of ordinary mornings

    More alike in how they feel than what they say.

    They seem like luxuries of consciousness,

    Like second thoughts that complicate the time

    One simply wastes. And why not? Mere being

    Is supposed to be enough, without the intricate

    Evasions of a mystery or offstage tragedy.

    Evenings follow on the afternoons, lingering in

    The living room and listening to the stereo

    While Peggy Lee sings Is That All There Is?

    Amid the morning papers and the usual

    Ghosts keeping you company, but just for a while.

    The true soul is the one that flickers in the eyes

    Of an animal, like a cat that lifts its head and yawns

    And looks at you, and then goes back to sleep.

    HOME

    It was a real place: There was a lawn to mow

    And boxes in the garage. It was always summer

    Or school, and even after oh so many years

    It was always there, like the voice on the telephone

    Each Sunday evening. I wondered how it was going to feel

    When I was finally on my own—alone, with no family left

    And no home to gravitate away from or think through.

    I miss the trips I took each year to see my father.

    I miss the desert and the ocean and the bungalows,

    The drive up to L.A. to visit Rogers, yet all these feelings—

    Are they actually feelings of loss, or just nostalgias for a notion?

    I live in the same world, I inhabit the same life,

    And yet it all seems insignificant and small. All that’s left

    Are the sensations of the empty afternoon, of feeling resigned

    To the way things simply come and go, almost relieved

    To find it almost feels like nothing. It feels like nothing at all.

    THE LATH HOUSE

    …breathing a small breath.

    —Theodore Roethke

    1853 (it sounds like a year) First Avenue,

    The first house I remember that we lived in as a family.

    Oh, there was the bungalow on Maxim Street we rented

    While my father was in Korea, where I first discovered dreams,

    And before that one in Hollywood I can barely remember,

    A few blocks from Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

    This one had green awnings in the front, a living room

    With Venetian blinds, a backyard with a garden and a pepper tree,

    A small apartment over the garage, and behind all that

    An unused lath house filled with dried-out dirt and vegetation,

    Where the sunlight filtered weakly through the slats.

    There was a shed with windows of translucent Plexiglass

    Attached to it in back, with more decaying plants

    Amid the spiders and the shadows. I hated going there:

    It wasn’t frightening so much as claustrophobic and unclear,

    Like something difficult to see, then harder to recall.

    What I remember most of all are houses, like the large

    Victorian manse on Fir Street that I loved to paint

    With watercolors, just across the street from where I stayed

    When I had chicken pox, with my mother away at work

    And my father away again in Japan, with an elderly retired couple—

    What was their name?—who reminded me of Martha Hoople and the Major.

    I love the way remembering lets the light in, as the sullen gray

    Of consciousness dissolves into a yard, a pepper tree, a summer day,

    And minor moments and details that had been buried in the past

    Take

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