Customer Reviews

The Constructor: Poems

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John Koethe is a professional philosopher whose poems speak deeply about fleeting sensations and emotional states that are almost all contained within the voice of the poem. The effect of his long-lined work is surely cumulative and by the end of the book most readers will have entered into a reflective and slightly depressed state (the position of modern philosophy?)similar to that of the poem's speaker (and author?). Unfortunately, the poems are almost devoid of music, metaphor and simile. There is very little exploration of language and the diction is professorial, clinical, almost psychiatric. There is virtually no recognition of the world outside the speaker and this has the effect of distancing the reader. The book's blurb raises the example of Wallace Stevens but there really is no comparison. Stevens' investigations into mind and philosophy were carried out with full regard for how we perceive the world and how to best describe that interaction with inventive language and strange music. Koethe's work is exceedingly dry and is probably an acquired taste.

These ambitious meditative poems are a beautiful and shattering achievement. Wordsworth, Stevens, Eliot and Ashbery are all internalized in this demanding record of one's man's inner life. THE CONSTRUCTOR should be read by any serious reader of poetry.