John Koethe: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

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The Divinity WithinPrevious Post

Sometimes I write to try to figure something out

I hadn't understood before, that somebody else has said.

I've no idea what "the divinity within" might mean,

And yet I've heard it said so often that it must mean something

Everyone recognizes, whether they know what it really means or not.

It could mean we're created in God's image, if there were one,

Though I think it makes more sense the other way around,

Which is what I hope that Emerson and my mother had in mind.

It's not just that the supernatural makes no sense, and that the world

Is real enough without it. It's that each ordinary life seems at the same time

So miraculous it has to be divine, whatever that divinity might be.

 

Why do we think we're something other than we are? Look at the stars,

Or else don't bother, since there's nothing there to see. You realize

They're there, and yet you can't imagine what the worlds that they sustain

Could be like, or if those worlds exist, though there must be billions of them.

How could those lives be anything like ours, with its private sense of time

And memories that speak to me alone, like Sally's hair? Of course the inability

To feel them doesn't mean they can't be real, but what does real even mean 

When it's applied to things we can't begin to understand? I understand this life,

At least I think I do. But how can a life that doesn't have this sense of self

Or the past or poetry, even if it's written in the stars, be one that speaks to me?

 

Perhaps instead of being part of something too immense to understand

Or inhabiting an expanding multiverse in which every possibility is realized

And equally real, each person's life might be in some sense all there is,

Whatever that might mean. I know it sounds absurd, but it isn't any more

Ridiculous than all those narratives of God I grew up trying to believe.

What makes a life divine isn't its perfection or its power, but its estrangement

From the world and the reflection of itself in all it sees. I wish I understood

What people mean by an eternal life. I only know that mine is singular,

Complete and coextensive with the transitory universe that it contains---

As though it were like God's and comprehended everything, but small.

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John Koethe's most recent books are Beyond Belief and Walking Backwards: Poems 1966–2016, both from Farrar, Straus and Giroux; and Thought and Poetry: Essays on Romanticism, Subjectivity, and Truth (Bloomsbury).  “The Divinity Within” will be included in a new book, Cemeteries and Galaxies, to be published by FSG in April, 2025. [Author photo by Tom Bamberger.]

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                                                                              William Blake, Albion Rose, ca 1794

 

Comments

[Troy Jollimore]

Wonderful poem. I am such an admirer of John Koethe's work; it makes my world seem larger, deeper, richer. Thank you, John.

[lally]

excellent poem and post , thank you john and terence and william

[Sr. Leslie]

Interesting poem …John’s question “what is the divine within?”…what is divine?…what is the Divine? … What profound questions and especially today as we begin the season of Advent …as he keeps asking and searching, that journey will only lead him (and us) deeper in his relationship with God…himself and others…not in a linear quest but all untwined and often messy…this is a good poem to keep handy as I begin this Advent…once again, great selection Terence!… Thank you and thank you John!

[Don Berger]

John Koethe's effort "to try to figure something out" is a tremendous journey the reader is thrilled to take with him, in this and all of his poems. What brilliance, pace, deliberation, and clarity! Once more Terence has shown us the way, helping us start the new week with a work of high art, in this case the highest.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Prof. Berger

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Leslie. Always good to get your perspective, esp. on matters divine.

[Greg McBride]

How wonderful to have this poem from my inimitable college classmate, John, a poem that thinks its way through the realities and unrealities that characterize the daily climate of our lives. As this poem makes clear, the principle underlying John's work is honesty, with himself and with his readers. And yet, there are the mysteries.

[CH]

This poem contains, well, everything! And "what cannot be spoken of ... is passed over in silence" (Wittgenstein).

[Richard Giannone]

Koethe's sense of mystery and singularity is clear and resonates with me. We don't have to understand mystery to love mystery. God stopped talking so that he can live in his mystery.

[Bernard Welt]

very much looking forward to the new book. John Koethe is a lodestar, so he knows something about stars. I met him not long ago and was . . . starstruck, of course

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

This is so grounded. Very moving. Thank you.