The Constructor - Softcover

"'This secret life/Whose language is the melancholy sound the heart makes/Beating against its cage': this is John Koethe's subject in his beautifully constructed and deeply moving new book of poems--lyrics of the dark and painfully honest inward gaze. Koethe, a philosopher by training, knows that meditation is more than just random reflection, that it is a discipline exercise culminating in a hard-won and hence exhilarating self-knowledge."--Marjorie Perloff"Starting from Stevens ("Sunday Evening!") and ending. . . never ending, Koethe's voice is raised in an indefatigably eloquent phraseology of inspection (the nostalgias, the anticipations, the fatigues), rhyming rarely but characteristically 'forgetfulness' with 'fullness, ' and this time around epitomizing the effort in a single line: 'I have this life, and still remain dissatified.' Pause at 'still' at 'remain, ' at 'dissatisfied' and give the three sentences equal weight: you have the core; now read outward to the rind. That which is creative must create itself--the poet, the maker, indeed with certain happiness "The Constructor!""-- Richard Howard"He is a master of blank verse who knows the field of his inquiry remarkably well and has give it, with this volume, a new and almost sublime magnitude."--"Rain Taxi

A lyrical new collection of poetry, nominated for The New Yorker Book Award in Poetry, by the winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award focuses on the at once difficult and rewarding process of self-realization and self-discovery. Reprint.