Ninety-fifth Street: Poems

A Harper Perennial paperback original, Ninety-fifth Street is a beautiful new collection of poems by John Koethe, acclaimed by poet Edward Hirsch as an heir to Wallace Stevens. In this, his eighth book of poems, Koethe, the author of North Point North and Falling Water, offers readers the reflections of a poet in mid-life, an “aging child of 62,” passionately engaged with the world yet drawn to meditate on memory, time, and the mysteries of human existence. |

In his eighth book of poems, John Koethe offers readers the reflections of a poet in midlife, an "aging child of sixty-two," passionately engaged with the world yet drawn to meditate on memory, time, and the mysteries of human existence. In Ninety-fifth Street, Koethe retraces narratives from his life and moves across various landscapes he once inhabited; in his hands these stories and places become poems of beauty, feeling, and poignant candor.

Disarmingly conversational and always accessible, these new poems offer the pleasures of a lucid intelligence and a distinctive poetic voice, by turns contemplative and worldly, lyrical, witty, and elegiac.

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“Always thoughtful and heartfelt, Koethe’s poems have become simply heartbreaking. Koethe…writes meditative, introspective poems that have long encouraged comparisons to Wallace Stevens.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“His best book yet...accessible and surprisingly powerful poems....you sense that Koethe slowly approaches death the way that he does life—with an unusual and infectious lightness.” - Time Out New York