Swimmer

John Koethe, in his tenth volume of poetry, investigates the capricious nature of everyday life. His poems--always dynamic and in process, never static or complete--luxuriate in the questions that punctuate the most humdrum of routines, rendering a robust portrait of an individual: complicated, quotidian, and resounding with truth. The Swimmer argues that this "energizes everything": life's trivialities, surprises, and disappointments, and the "terrible feeling of being just about to fall."