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
[1] Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way. Trans. Lydia Davis. New York: Penguin, 2004: 45
