The Swimmer

"I found his arguments (sometimes kvetches, sometimes rationales) in these poems compelling."—Jim Higgins, Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee)

"Koethe is a beautiful writer, one whose subtle inventiveness can give new life to persistent images, nail a complex feeling in just a few words, or make the basic tools of the poetic trade into sources of pleasure and persuasion."—Jonathan Farmer, Slate

"These poems won't shatter the universe, but that's precisely their point, the tragedy they lament: that as individuals we are small and the universe pays our seemingly vast inner lives no mind. Koethe seeks to ease his mounting fear by talking—by writing—himself through it, and listening in is a perverse pleasure, and a palpable comfort."—Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

“Koethe’s poems are able to offer the kind of idiosyncratic musings that will keep the reader thinking beyond the confines of the page.”—Publishers Weekly

“A welcome new book from an important voice.”—Library Journal