Walkabout

Walking Backwards: Poems 1966–2016 by John Koethe. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, $40.00 cloth.

A BOOK of poems by definition poses a paradox. Unless it contains a unified and intentional epic, any collection of lyric poems comprises a series of entirely distinct moments that, in essence, have nothing to do with one another. However, because they are placed in a certain order or share a general theme underscored by the book’s title and arrangement, they project a unity usually accidental and separate from their generation. Poets do not write poems in the same sequence as they appear in a book, nor do they usually come up with a theme for a book and write poems to fit it. Perhaps what leads to the illusion of this is the idea of the “poet” behind the scenes—the consciousness that not only forged each poem, but that we sense fuses all such poems into one: the grin of the Cheshire Cat revealed in glimpses between the lines.

All of this is exacerbated when it comes to a volume of collected poems, especially one published toward the end of a long and prolific career. When poets sit down in the late innings to select and order the collection they wish to hand off to posterity, the illusion of a cohesive plan soon overtakes the fleeting and haphazard notions that independently gave rise to each poem. What surfaces) “a mind / Relentlessly faithful to itself and more or less real.”