QBD #9: Poetry as a Conversation with John Koethe

Poetry as the philosophical conversation we have with ourselves over a lifetime.

The first time someone handed me a copy of John Koethe’s poetry (The Constructor), I was working for the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington. This was when that bookshop took up a block of Pioneer Square near the bay and the place was a seemingly unending wooden maze of delight. It has since moved to 10th Avenue, and remains one of the best bookshops in the world.

Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle WA @Elliott Bay

I often spent lunch breaks reading poetry, and John Koethe’s early books were some of my favourites. They expressed the oscillation I felt between a nearly overwhelming emotional young life and the grounded critical thinking of a philosophical person too old for my age. A friend who also worked at the shop and suffered a similar disjunction passed the books along to me as though they were medicine. Koethe’s poems explored the heartache and muted presence we felt—too young, too sensitive, too pensive, unable to rest.

Reading these same books 15 years later to prepare for my conversation with John, I felt them more like waves rolling through me, restful and cosmic, layered and wise, but with the same oscillatory questioning.