All Those Yesterdays: a lifelong conversation with poet-philosopher John Koethe

Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Ludwig Wittgenstein, dualism, physics, and more.
"John Koethe was born on December 25, 1945. He began writing poetry in 1964 during his undergraduate years at Princeton University and went on to receive a PhD in philosophy from Harvard University.

Koethe’s Ninety-fifth Street (Harper Perennial, 2009) won the 2010 Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. He has published numerous other books of poetry, including Cemeteries and Galaxies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025); Walking Backwards: Poems 1966–2016 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018); The Swimmer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016); North Point North: New and Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2003), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; The Constructor (Harper Perennial, 1999); Falling Water (Harper Perennial, 1997), which won the Kingsley Tufts Award; Domes (Columbia University Press, 1974), which won the Frank O’Hara Award for Poetry; and Blue Vents (Audit/Poetry, 1968)."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-koethe
https://poets.org/poet/john-koethe

Exploring the Intersection of Poetry and Philosophy with John Koethe
In this episode of 'Love and Philosophy,' host Andrea interviews renowned poet and philosopher John Koethe. They discuss the concept of the oscillating self as a bridge between dichotomies, particularly within the realms of poetry and philosophy. John shares his journey from being a young poet influenced by figures like John Ashbury and Frank O'Hara, to earning a PhD in philosophy and balancing both disciplines throughout his career. They explore the themes of self-conversation in poetry, the intersection of scientific and artistic pursuits, and the enduring sense of awe in consciousness. The conversation also touches on the emotional landscapes of Koethe's poetry, including themes of nostalgia and the sublime. The episode concludes with a reading from Koethe's book 'Falling Water.'

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00:00 Introduction to John Koethe
00:31 John Koethe's Background and Achievements
01:06 Balancing Poetry and Philosophy
03:45 Early Influences and Religious Upbringing
06:31 Transition to Literature and Philosophy
08:43 Discovering Modern Poetry
12:52 Meeting Influential Poets
21:23 Romanticism and Modernism in Poetry
23:46 Philosophical Dualism and the Mind-Body Problem
30:18 Modernism in Art, Literature, and Physics
33:27 Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
34:19 Exploring Perspectives in Poetry
35:43 Philosophical Influences and Oscillations
41:02 Conversations with Influential Thinkers
42:11 The Role of Conversation in Poetry
46:26 Philosophy vs. Poetry: Different Constraints
53:06 The Sublime and Self-Consciousness
58:41 Architecture and the Passage of Time
01:01:12 Concluding Thoughts and Future Works
01:02:56 Poetry Reading: The Realm of Ends

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Transcript

Talking to yourself: Ashbery, O'Hara, physics and dualism with poet-philosopher John Koethe

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to love and philosophy. This is Andrea. Today, I'm talking with John Koethe. Who is a poet philosopher. We talk about the oscillation of self and how this is a way of bridging dichotomy. Holding the paradox. It becomes necessary when you began to understand yourself as oscillating between categories such as poetry and philosophy. 

John, Koethe has both, he's both a poet and a philosopher. But he's very well known for his poetry. He's won quite some awards, like the Lenore Marshall award which he won for 95th street, his poetry book from 2009. John is from San Diego. He was born in 1945. He started writing poetry in the sixties when he was an undergraduate at Princeton university. And he became. Friends with poets like John Ashbury and even Frank O' Hara, as we talk about here. He got his PhD in philosophy from Harvard and [00:01:00] he's been teaching philosophy. He's actually retired now, but he taught in Wisconsin for many many years. But at the same time, he was always writing poetry and we talk about how he balanced those worlds of poetry and philosophy. And how they are each in, both in different ways. You can definitely feel it in

is poetry. One reason. I love it so much. A friend introduced me to it. Way back and I've been reading him ever since his books tend to come around the world with me which is fitting because there are a lot about exploration of landscape, both geographical, but then it ends up feeling very mental and emotional. Quite often when I read his poems, I have a sense of childhood or nostalgia or

something from years past, which is not quite a memory, but more a feeling of being on a street or a smell or something sensory. So he's pretty amazing in the way he can conjure that with his words and there's nothing flashy about it, but it becomes very [00:02:00] intimate. So We talk about his writing and what poetry is and philosophy and how ourself is an oscillation and we can never really pin it down. But there's a way in which we can notice that movement. And that happens in the best poetry or the best philosophy even. Where you feel the movement as you are the movement, so to speak. There's one book I just happened to pick up. That I've been carrying around of his called Falling Water. And I just noticed for the first time, but the cover is a Van Gogh or van Gogh painting and this painting is hanging apparently about 40 minutes away. in the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum So maybe I'll have to go see it. But I bring it up just because it reminds me of his poetry. There's a kind of revisiting of places and seeing them in a new way so anyway, I opened this book and there's a poem called the realm of ends, which has a lot to do with extremes and moving beyond them. Which is [00:03:00] fitting so I'll read that at the end of our conversation.

I'm really glad you're here. I hope today is a good day for you wherever you may be in. That you have a little poetry in your life of some kind, the kind you like. All right. Here we go.

Andrea Hiott: Hi john. It's so nice to see you. Thank you for being here today So you're in milwaukee today, right that's 

John Koethe: Here since 1973 

Andrea Hiott: I love your poetry. I love your writing. You're a poet and a philosopher for those who might know you on one side or the other. But as we get into your work, you've often said that poetry is about conversation with yourself or talking to yourself in a particular way.

John Koethe: I do sort of think of it that way. 

Andrea Hiott: I wonder when in your own life, or if we can go back to when you were young man, young boy, you started to think about that conversation with self, or when did you begin to talk to yourself? If I could put it in those terms. Well, 

John Koethe: I'm [00:04:00] not sure I can put a date on it.

I, I. Though I don't have any religious beliefs anymore, but I was brought up very religiously, first Catholic in Catholic school. And then my, mother restaged the Reformation and we all became Lutherans. So I suppose religion is, you know, always for me has always involved a great deal of introspection.

And even though all that religion kind of fell away, During, you know, my high school. Still, that's probably when I sort of first thought of it, though. I didn't come to to literature until much, until later, but I suspect that my religious upbringing has something to do with my introspective nature.

Andrea Hiott: That makes sense. It makes me think of prayer. Yes. 

John Koethe: And as I say I really was, you know, believed these things quite seriously and then all of a sudden they just evaporated [00:05:00] and now it just seems to me superstition though. Though I still consider, you know, myself a kind of spiritual poet but not in any Religious sense, I mean, even though Elliot's one of my great models, I don't share any of his religious beliefs.

So I'm not sure what they are actually, but, yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: but he was also he had a degree in philosophy, right? I think you talked about that. 

John Koethe: Yeah, he finished his, uh, degree at Harvard. And if he had come back, he would have had a job waiting for him at Harvard, but he just he never came back to the United States and pursued that.

Andrea Hiott: These are definitely not disconnected, even if they're separate pursuits, the what might be religious when we're younger and the philosophical and the poetic. But when did the break come? You said it suddenly evaporated. Was it through education? 

John Koethe: I don't know that there was a break exactly.

It's just a You know what I think too by the time I was in high school, though I we went to [00:06:00] church and whatnot, but I didn't really have any strong religious beliefs by the time I was in high school So I suppose the it started to evaporate probably around oh junior high Sixth seventh eighth grade around in then.

But what replaced it really was a an obsession with science and No

mathematics so I didn't go directly into, to literature and philosophy. In fact, those came rather later. 

Andrea Hiott: So your first passion was the more scientific mathematics side. 

John Koethe: Yes. Well, I I've been thinking about that lately. In fact, it's in some sense, it's the theme of my new book that's coming out next year.

But yes, I well, I was a kind of science fair whiz kid and though I, what I worked on, you know, for my science projects were things having to do with rocket engines and models. But what I was really interested [00:07:00] in was Was physics and mathematics. And I was determined that I was going to become a mathematical, a theoretical physicist.

And in high school, in my senior year, it really came down to choosing between MIT and Princeton. And I thought I was about to go to MIT. And then a thought occurred to me that, well, what if I were there and though it would never happen, what if I'd been lost interest in physics and math, and then I'd be at, you know, I'd be stuck there at MIT.

I didn't realize they had a good philosophy department, but so I thought, well, what Princeton's, Math and physics departments are, if anything, better than MIT. So I might as, I think I'll go there. And sure enough, um, after my freshman year, I, for somewhat different reasons, I, I kind of lost interest in physics and mathematics.

And I had started taking, I, I [00:08:00] didn't really know what philosophy was about in high school. I I always thought that, you know, it was Walter Kaufman, I didn't realize that what real philosophy was like, but I decided I really liked, um, philosophy and decided to major in that. And then in high school, even though I did all my, serious, My serious obsession was with science.

I did read an awful lot of modernist fiction Joyce and Faulkner and Hemingway, Fitzgerald Dostoevsky and, um, but I and I even wrote a little bit, but I'd never read any modern poetry. I'd read, you know, maybe a little frost and that was about it. But then in my Sophomore year in college, I took a course in modern literature from, um, Carlos Baker, who was Greenway's first biographer.

And it included both poetry [00:09:00] and fiction, but that's where I first read modern poetry. In particular, Yeats and Eliot and Pound and others. And I was just bowled over by it, and I didn't really Know what it was, but I thought, well, I just want to try to do this, whatever it is. And that became my obsession.

So, I, and then I also stopped running track and started smoking. And so we collapsed decadence for my high school 

Andrea Hiott: That's interesting because because that seems like a different a different kind of Way of approaching the world when once you read the poetry, of course, I'm generalizing it too much But I mean you in your poetry, for example, you do talk about Writing almost like with a sense of disillusionment.

I think is the word you use of trying to see the world from a particular Place which makes sense with the science and math side, but then there's this very spiritual undercurrent Which I mean we already talked about the religious a bit, but was that what Yeats Woke up in you in a different way, or how can you?[00:10:00] 

John Koethe: Elliot in particular. 

And pound that too, but it seemed like a kind of well, it was a kind of deflationary impulse that I responded to in particularly in, in Elliot. But I it's basically the, my, my impulse is has always been a form of romanticism. And I think romanticism really is you know, basically a way of talking to yourself.

I always think of Harold Bloom's, um, book title, Shakespeare, the invention of the human, where he thinks of the Shakespearean soliloquy as the you know, the quintessential human romantic gesture. And I, though I started, I became obsessed with modernist poetry. I think of romanticism or modernism as really a continuation of romanticism.

It's just a deflation of romanticism instead of a an affirmative gesture it becomes, [00:11:00] um a form of deflation or disillusionment with romanticism, but it's still, it still shares the same obsessions. It's, it just is no longer affirmative. So that's the way I kind of, and I also like the fact that, um, I pursued philosophy as my major and there wasn't even, there wasn't a writing program at Princeton as there were hardly any places in those days.

This was in the early 60s, but there were a lot of very serious student poets and we all hung around together and, you know, told each other what to read and we kind of had a disdain for the English department so, I always thought of poetry as separate from my academic you know. 

Andrea Hiott: Even with the smoking and the quitting track, it's almost like a rebellious kind of space. Did it feel like, or a freedom, or emancipation, or? That's, 

John Koethe: that's the way I've always thought of it, that I am not, I'm not being tied to it professionally.

I had a [00:12:00] freedom to do whatever I wanted. And as I say, what I, well, I first responded to. People like Eliot and Pound, which was themselves, you know, were represented a kind of rebellion against poetry as it was at the end of the 19th century. But the poets I was drawn to when I first then started reading contemporary poetry, um, I never really cared much for, Um, the beats and I didn't initially what were, you know, kind of academic poets like Robert Lowell and others.

So, but I was first drawn to the Black Mountain Poets. Robert Duncan in particular, and I like the kind of disjunctive wave they wrote and with, you know, a lot of focus 

Andrea Hiott: on the language itself. Right. Or do I remember 

John Koethe: the focus on language and representation? And then I, and then there was a poet named Louis undergraduate a year ahead of me, named Louis McAdams, [00:13:00] um, and he he knew a lot of people in New York, poets in New York, and would bring them to, to campus for readings, and through him, I was introduced to the work of the New York school poets Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery and others.

And I was just blown away by by Ashbery in particular, that it had all of the kind of disjunctiveness and concern with representation. that the Black Mountain Poets did, but it had a much more deeply lyrical and, um, romantic well, Duncan was quite romantic too, but I just, and it had a kind of informality to it that I really responded to.

Andrea Hiott: Especially the mountains and rivers, I guess

John Koethe: The first book of ashberries I read was the tennis court oath, which is 

Andrea Hiott: oh Yeah, wonderful, 

John Koethe: but I read it just before rivers and mountains came out rivers 

Andrea Hiott: and mountains 

John Koethe: Read them, both at the same time and I didn't you know, a lot of people thought [00:14:00] that you know, there's a radical difference between rivers and mountains and the tennis court oath.

But since I really read them around the same time I saw more of the affinities between them and I was involved in, um, there was a big arts weekend at Princeton, not just poetry, but all the arts. And I was involved in that and Lewis McAdams had arranged the poets and the people who read were, um, Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery and Ted Berrigan and John Wieners, and I, introduced myself to Ashbery there and we hit it off immediately and became very good friends and remain so for the rest of his life And he invited me to a poet party the next week where I met Frank O'Hara.

And then I had, 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, you met Frank O'Hara. Whoa. Wow. 

John Koethe: And then a week after that, I had dinner with Ashbery, Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Coke. 

Andrea Hiott: What was that like having dinner with? 

John Koethe: Well, it was amazing. In fact, there's a [00:15:00] long poem in my book, 95th Street. The title poem of that book is, it's It starts with recounting that dinner 

from there. But yes, it was amazing. I was not supposed to, I was supposed to just stay for a, have a drink and then they were going to stay and finish a play that they had started years before. But it never finished. They hadn't actually seen each, all three of them together hadn't for quite some time.

But you know, one drink led to another and everyone soon I'd stayed for dinner and the play was forgotten. I just remember Kenneth Koch looking over at me at one point saying, love to see a boy eat. No that, that was really the start of a marvelous relationship. I mean, I think John's first you know, come on was, Oh, John, you're the only boy I've ever loved.

And I said, well, but John, I'm straight and [00:16:00] he says, Oh, that's all right.

Andrea Hiott: How wonderful that you just fell into that world. 

John Koethe: I was driving Lewis's Austin Healy Foggy and I was driving too fast and had an accident. So that kind of sealed our friendship down for, he neither was hurt. So I thought I'd killed the guy here yet, but he wasn't actually hurt very badly. So 

Andrea Hiott: that must've been scary though.

But yeah, you go through something like that. It bonds you. 

John Koethe: Yeah, but so I knew of all, most of the younger New York poets, in fact, the first one poets I've met before Ashbery was Peter Sheldahl and, , Kenward Elmsley. They came, Lewis brought them to campus. So I would hang around with him.

I met Larry Fagan that way. I think probably, I think I met him in 60. Seven or 68. I can't remember exactly what. 

Andrea Hiott: I just talked to Darryl Pinkney. I [00:17:00] don't know if you've met him, but I was, I've been thinking a lot about this time period because you're that generation, was like for me, very inspiring that there was actually a group of people talking about poetry and literature in this way and try and sort of living it.

I don't know. I almost feel like it's a myth. From Darryl's side, it was more elizabeth Hardwicke and Lao and that Brahman kind of tradition that he was in but, But for me, I was much more interested in New York school too. And I worked at St. Mark's bookshop and, you know, but I wonder from your perspective, Was it real?

Was it a myth? ? It 

John Koethe: was quite real. In fact I initially thought of myself as a kind of New York poet. Um,

Andrea Hiott: The Blue Vents is kind of in that style, right? Was that your first? It 

John Koethe: pretty much is. I mean, that, and it's very, you know, sort of imitative of Ashbery.

But, um, Ashbery actually had very wide ranging tastes and it was through him that I, , I was associated, say, Elizabeth Bishop with Robert Lowell and at the time I didn't [00:18:00] Lowell and Berman at all, though subsequently I did, but but I knew her John was very fond of, you know, Elizabeth Bishop's his favorite poet and

 and then Marianne Moore also and I gradually and then I, you know, I had a real temperamental affinity with John's poetry, and so when I was imitating that it felt natural, but when I started trying to write like people like Ted Berrigan or Ron Paget, or Frank O'Hara it really, I didn't think it was very good in that, and also at, around that time, I began to realize, I mean, one of the things about the New York school was they were very they were very strict on who you should and shouldn't read, and I began to rebel against that, and I decided I was going to read, you know, even though I still like to be limited to that, and I remember [00:19:00] W. H. Auden was giving a number of interviews, and he talked about how he wrote six poems a year, and I remember thinking it would be interesting. I think I'll write a poem that I take a really long time on, and I revise a lot. I wrote a year. 

A book called Domes. Which was the title poem of my The book after Blue Vance that won the 

and that was I was reading Heart Train, and a biography of Heart Train, and it's poetry, and I don't know if the Influence showed maybe a little bit in some things that you 

Andrea Hiott: well dome itself the title does 

John Koethe: yeah And it was really successful everyone liked it and I remember larry fagan particularly liked it and poetry magazine published it right away and So ever since then I still write that way just a few lines a day and it takes a long time and um, but that's after that I [00:20:00] still like You know, a lot of New York poets, especially Ashbery and James Schuyler and and a lot of Kenneth Coke, too, on They're you know, they're kind of five Frank O'Hara's I've decided and I like some of them but not all of them 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, there's just something about him and the whole art thing.

John Koethe: Oh, right. And he was really the center of that the New York school as a social movement. And after he was killed you know, that. 

Andrea Hiott: In an accident. It changed quite a bit. To talk about that yeah, you almost hit someone, but it was making me think of him on that cart and 

John Koethe: well, he was killed just, it was just, that was just about two months after I had dinner with him at that. 

Yeah, it was just, in fact, I remember Peter Schjeldahl sent me a postcard that summer. That's how I learned that Frank O'Hara had been killed. 

Andrea Hiott: Oh, goodness. 

John Koethe: Wrote me to tell me. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, there's something in all those poets maybe I can start to bring out the idea of contrast, because I when I was reading them, and also you There's this kind of, cadence [00:21:00] of, not, I guess disillusionment, but not, almost like a step back, talking to yourself, right? You have to step away from the subject in order to talk to the subject. But there's also a, almost, sometimes at the edge Of reason or almost an ecstasy is bubbling in there , does that make sense to you almost where something doesn't quite make sense, even though you're being so sensible 

John Koethe: Yes and I think it I basically my basic impulse Underlying impulses is romantic and I think I've written about this in a number of the pieces in a book, thought and poetry, but you know, the fundamental romantic gesture is the cons gesture of the sublime in which you, well, in its cons form you're confronted with some, um some physical enormity, the Alps were big at the time. the point of annihilation. But then you have a kind of counter movement in which you realize that, [00:22:00] you know, great as those Alps are, you can take hold them in your mind and and in that sense, transcend and rise above them. And that's the gesture of the sublime.

And I kind of. Think of Thomas Nagel's subjective versus objective point of view as a kind of very generalized version of that, um, oscillation of the sublime between, you know, the physical world and the, then the transcendent self that overcomes it. It's just that in classical romanticism originally, You know, it culminates in this affirmation of this transcendent self and that's what you find throughout Wordsworth.

Though, I think what happens in, in modernism is you realize that's you can't believe that anymore, even though you're tempted and drawn to it as Stevens is you really can't engage it. [00:23:00] Romanticism in good faith as an affirmation. 

Andrea Hiott: Is this what you mean by romantic opposition when you talk about that or, and by the romantic, is it? Just for people who don't know all these terms or don't want to go try to figure it all out, I think it relates very much to things all of us can understand, 

the romantic, do you mean getting carried away a bit in taking the subjective too seriously? That's why you have to leave it or? 

John Koethe: Well, that you just can't, you know, The, the conscience sublime is not really an argument. It's just kind of an, it affirms the transcendence of the self because it can take in the physical world.

But of course that's really not an argument. that's a, in a way it's kind of almost a superstitious, it's a kind another form of superstition like religion. Though, I actually have become a kind of very qualified philosophical dualist, so I can talk about that some, if you want but.

Yeah, there's just. you can't really, I mean, so [00:24:00] instead of this, the Kantian sublime, it is a real experience that the people, everyone, most people have had a version of it, even though they don't know what it's called or how Kantian. 

Andrea Hiott: ? so would you mean Just for those listening something transcendent where you forget yourself.

So where you so identify for example with a with nature if we want to talk about Wordsworth or if you want to or You so identify that you are overwhelmed by something that you don't consider yourself. You lose yourself Is that 

John Koethe: that you feel yourself? apart from nature. It's so, it's a kind of philosophical dualism that you're, you know, there's the physical world and there's the mind or the soul or the self or whatever you want to call it.

And that's distinct from nature and in some sense transcends it. And that's at least in the classical romantic version, in words worth saying. But, um, but at [00:25:00] some point you. You know, you just can't in good faith really believe that though I do believe something like that, a very qualified form of philosophical dualism.

Andrea Hiott: you can't believe that the self is different from. Consciousness and mind. I mean, the body is different from consciousness and self. 

John Koethe: Well, I do actually think so though. This is reflects, based on a kind of reading of Wittgenstein by my advisor, Rogers Albritton in an unpublished paper that, so I, I think, yeah I think there's a paper that I included in thought and poetry called, um, metaphysics and the mind body problem.

Andrea Hiott: that's where you talk about Nagel 

John Koethe: well, I well, I think I first talk about Nagel in a paper, an earlier paper called Poetry and the Experience of That one's know that the quote, the one on the mind body problem is [00:26:00] that's a straight to philosophy paper and doesn't talk about poetry at all, though I did give it a an epigraph from John Ashbery's.

Seeing on Popeye that reads. If this is all we need from fear from spinach, then I don't mind so much. So it picks up Rogers. All Burton has this reading of Wittgenstein in which he thinks, yeah, Wittgenstein really does think that there, we refer to pains and those things. And there are such things.

It's just that he says they're metaphysically thin. There is his phrase. They don't, they're not, they're real, but they aren't as, you know, As real as things that are metaphysically more robust. And that's kind of the way I now think of the status of the mind and what are called qualia. That yeah, they really are real.

And for basically Cartesian reasons, the mind is distinct from the body. it's [00:27:00] just metaphysically thin and you don't have to worry about it. And yes, we're It's not worth completely material beings. It's just that this gives rise to perspectival consciousness. And for basically Descartes reasons, we can't identify the mind with the body or any part of it.

So, but it's, but don't worry about it. that's kind of right. Well, 

Andrea Hiott: yeah, something I think about a lot in the Maybe draws me to read you and that you talk about in different ways in the different essays I'm sorry to keep them all separate, but you do talk about this like The self being real is one extreme, and then the other extreme would be that it's that it's an illusion, , a delusion, and this is what we're talking about now, but then you can't really believe in either of those fully, even if you know one is true, you can't fully believe in it.

So, what I, what get what I think of a lot is holding the [00:28:00] paradox, talk about Eliot and, coming back, this. Oscillation, right? Elliot, where you come back to where you were started and know it for the first time, and you talk about oscillation, and your poetry is a kind of oscillation between the subjective and the objective exploration, and but overall, you're sort of holding the paradox, aren't you?

You're sort of, as you just expressed, we're using language just to get to know this movement, it's not that we can ever really see it. freeze it at some spot of opposition or 

John Koethe: I think that's right And I think there's a tension between you know the subjective viewpoint and the objective viewpoint to put it in Nagel's terms and that both of them are Incomplete I mean from a subjective viewpoint You know to use Wittgenstein's phrase.

The world is my world and I'm the only You Mine there is, and my world is the only world there is, but then from an objective point of view, I'm completely insignificant and not even fully, not even real. [00:29:00] And there's just this kind of oscillation between these two things. And in fact that, that's kind of the theme of my new book that's coming out next year called cemeteries and galaxies and it's um, and it actually has a lot of physics and mathematics and astrophysics in it too. You have 

Andrea Hiott: One or two physics ish poems that I'm remembering at least. 

John Koethe: there are a few and if you, this book has some, ones that are explicitly so in fact, the last poem is a longish poem called Solveig 1927, which is Solveig conference was the big conference of all of the great physicists of the day.

B to rock and Amazing. they were all there and 

Andrea Hiott: That speaks to sort of particle and wave and I can see a through line in all of this and probably projecting, because the philosophy I work on is trying to understand how we hold this paradox and even start to understand that as more of the reality instead of which is what you're [00:30:00] doing. instead of saying, okay, we have to choose between subject and object, or mental and physical, or self and illusion, or whatever, that are real and illusion that we understand those are different ways of trying to understand this process by which you have to hold it, which is what you do, I think, with your poetry.

John Koethe: That's absolutely right. And what I've also come to I think in the last couple of years, and which is really the theme of this new book, is that, I mean, we think of modernism as constituted by art and literature, but there's, modernism is equally applicable to, not just to philosophy, but also to physics and even mathematics.

I mean, look at Douglas Hofstadter's book, Gödel, Escher, Bach. 

Andrea Hiott: I love that book. And Strange Loop too. It's even more. 

John Koethe: And in fact, I think the reason, I mean, I'm still very interested in In physics and keep up with it even though I can't [00:31:00] don't know enough to do it, you know, to actually work on it. But I mean, I, quantum mechanics is a real mess and no one, there, there is no accepted interpretation of it even though it's.

It's clearly right in the terms of what it predicts and what it makes possible, but no one knows what it means. And the, I think the reason is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is now pretty much been abandoned and discredited. But I think Bohr, that, that stuck around for a very long time.

The modernist reasons, namely, it's just, it's weird, it's modern. And I think the Copenhagen interpretation was a manifestation of modernism in physics. And I think modernism is now kind of over for various reasons. 

Andrea Hiott: It's true, but it's also, if we put that in the context of, holding paradox, you know, there's always this oscillation in the same [00:32:00] way, so we can never really pin it down.

For me, it's almost like quantum physics is trying to teach us a new practice of how to understand the world, which something like your poetry could also maybe be trying to, not trying to teach us in a conscious sense, like you sit down to try to do it, but through reading it, I've been reading it for a long time, and I get a similar feeling of this practice of how to Look at myself and hold what is myself and also in that process change self or open to a new self You know you do this to you almost we could talk about how you talk about embodying the perspective, right?

that's what you're doing in the poems too and This feels like a practice is not so dissimilar from what happens even in all the debate about physics. 

John Koethe: Oh, yes. No, I think that's right. But I think, well, the philosopher of physics that I like most, well, there are a number of them, but Tim Modlin in particular, but, the, Quantum mechanics is really, was [00:33:00] really held back by the refusal of, in fact, that's one reason why, when I got to college, I became disillusioned with physics because it turned out that when I started taking physics, you didn't really, You have to learn this kind of sexy stuff that you learned in reading in high school.

You had to learn classical mechanics. And then it turned out that physicists weren't really interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics that was left to philosophers. And in fact, that was a good way to get tenure was to worry about that in, in a physics department. So a few exceptions like David Bohm and a few others.

But by and large physicists didn't worry about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and now they do, and no one knows what to say about it now. 

Andrea Hiott: I wrote about David Bohm as part of my philosophy thesis, connecting it to Hegel, and I got so much pushback because they, people didn't consider him a real physicist. 

John Koethe: And plus he had political problems too. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I didn't know about all that at the time, but 

John Koethe: Yeah. but no, well, he's, one [00:34:00] of his views are one of the, uh, the three. Possible. Yeah. The other is the multiple worlds version and the other is kind of Italian version.

The Ravelli, 

Andrea Hiott: yes, no, it's not Ravelli, it's though he's, he writes about a lot too. 

 we could talk about physics and it's really fascinating to me, but I think what I want to try to come back to is this oscillation and I guess what big picture quantum physics is trying to deal with, which is that we can always see things from more than one perspective.

And See them as true from that perspective at that moment, so to speak, which doesn't mean it's going to be true from another perspective later. And that's very confusing and hard to hold, but I feel that with your poetry that you, through exploring perspectives, you're you're finding ways to do that.

That I wonder if it, it's satisfying in the sense of, because we've talked about, religion at first, you were very into that, and that's kind of going to [00:35:00] one long side of the oscillation, and then math and science, that's another side of the oscillation, but neither are going to be satisfying because They can't be forever, right?

It's one stream. 

John Koethe: And the poets and philosophers who I'm most drawn to, well, there's an essay in Thought and Poetry called what's it called? Gestures of Temptation and Refusal in Wittgenstein and Stevens. And they both exemplify it. I mean, it's, Stevens is constantly saying, making romantic affirmations and then taking them back 

Andrea Hiott: Does he say in one of his poems?

I am my world And you are your world or something like that I kept hearing that when I was reading thought and poetry again because you talk about wittgenstein and he says that too, right? Is that connected?

John Koethe: I am my world, microcosm, that's from Tractatus, but he's, he, I wrote that essay on Stevens and Wittgenstein because they both exemplify this kind of oscillation between being tempted by, you know, in Wittgenstein's case, a philosophical picture and then [00:36:00] reacting against it. But then being I mean, people, I dislike these kind of facile readings of Wittgenstein which, in which he somehow showed us how to stop doing philosophy because he doesn't, he thinks it's your, it's a temptation that you're drawn to and even though you know it, you may know in some sense that it's illusory, you can't help it.

You can't get, you can't break its spell. So you're constantly being drawn to it and then attempting to see through it and then being drawn. And it's exactly the same as in Stevens too. 

Andrea Hiott: it's that same kind of strange loop. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I think of, Of the constraint, That's a word too that comes up Maybe if we talk about the difference between philosophy and poetry, for example But when I think of Wittgenstein and when I think of Stevens both of whom I love very much There I also feel okay life is Full of [00:37:00] feeling and suffering and and you almost need some constraint in order to deal with it.

And this oscillation can become almost an illness if you're not careful, if you're too sensitive and too smart. Does that make any sense?

John Koethe: Well, I don't know about an illness, but it can certainly be frustrating. there's, I think one of the physics, astrophysics poems in the new book has epigraph from the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, which reads I'm significant scream the speck. 

And so, yeah, so it is this, oscillation between, from a subjective point of view, you and your world are everything.

But from an objective point of view you're nothing. And you, you can't sort of stay put with either of those. 

Andrea Hiott: And with Wittgenstein, I can see, that's where I met it could become almost an illness. you quote, I think in the book, Or one of the things, one of your books, about that [00:38:00] quote about the happy and unhappy man inhabit different worlds, and how this kind of perplexed you, but I can understand that because it's a similar oscillation to where if you're gonna give yourself to one of these different views just in order to have a bit of peace, just a kind of foundation, then it can seem like very different worlds, right, to be, yeah.

Even in the poetic romantic versus the sort of more philosophical or disillusioned. 

John Koethe: Yeah, I've never been Quite clear as to what Wittgenstein meant by that, but it seems like a very powerful Idea and it's quite a the last part of the tractatus is quite an odds And in temperament with the first part.

But I mean the the beginning stuff in the tractus, the world of the happy and unhappy man are, they're just the same. They're just configurations of objects. But by the end of it, it's a completely different view. Um, but I'm [00:39:00] not sure what it is. 

Andrea Hiott: How do you think of the world and the way V should sign?

That's an important word. 

John Koethe: well, I don't know. I mean, early Wittgenstein, he did have a conception of what the world was a configuration configurations of objects. And I think the best account of it is found in Robert Fog's book on Vichtenstein. I think by, I mean by the later Stein, even though.

My book on Vichtenstein is called The Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought, and it's about the similarities between the early and the later philosophical outlook. Um, certainly the idea that there's such a thing, a single totality called the by the, the, in the later work. So, um, he puts forward a. A version of it in the Tractatus. I guess 

Andrea Hiott: I was trying to get with the subjective, [00:40:00] objective idea too, or the, what we're broadly discussing is more scientific or artist, artistic or poetry or philosophical or this oscillation, 

John Koethe: No, um, Thomas Nagel was, uh, I don't know that where in Wittgenstein you'd find. something comparable to Nagel's Subjective vs. Objective, but Nagel was a student of my advisor, Rogers Albritton, and was deeply influenced by Albritton and by, through Albritton, by Wittgenstein, so I think Nagel's the root of his, you know, subjective versus objective is to be found somewhere in Vi Stein, but I'm not sure precisely where you would find it.

I, so I think that's, yeah, 

Andrea Hiott: if I fill it in there, but I don't know how to make the, I, the continuity, I think you express it, but it not ex explicitly in these terms. So I think that's, 

John Koethe: that's the way I see it. So 

it comes out of there [00:41:00] somehow. I remember. Yeah. I remember Rogers Allbritton once telling me an anecdote that, about Isaiah Berlin.

I remember when I was in college, Terry Penner said he was telling someone else who was wondering where to go, that he should go to Harvard so he could meet Rogers Allbritton, the smartest man on the Western hemisphere, he said. And I remember once. Albritton told me a story that he'd heard a remark that Isaiah Berlin made, I guess Roger's name came up in conversation and Berlin said, Oh yes, Albritton, good man.

He invented Nagel.

Andrea Hiott: Oh, whoa, that's strong. I guess we all invent one another or we're invented by what we read in a way and how we put it together. 

John Koethe: Well, Rogers wrote hard, hardly anything that we 

Andrea Hiott: hear the [00:42:00] conversations or yeah, 

John Koethe: well, he's famous 

Andrea Hiott: Teaching

John Koethe: is Reputation rested entirely almost entirely on his conversations, 

Andrea Hiott: this idea of conversation I want to think about a little bit, because you've said that poetry is, a conversation with yourself.

Yes. And I also, you know, you also write about how it's a conversation with other poets, And other. Yeah, there's scales of it is nested. It's not just an internal self. It's like what you're saying now, these conversations with these teachers. And 

John Koethe: well, I think that's right. And I think you're, you, it's a conversation with yourself, but you have to remember, you know, you can talk to yourself about anything, So the, so it's not to say it's talking to yourself isn't to suggest it's not solipsistic or perversely, private or introspective.

It can be about everything though. I do think that, and this is part of what I mean when I think of modernism as having run its [00:43:00] course, I do think one thing I don't I rejected the idea of writing for an audience I remember once listening to a conversation with an interview with Billy Collins in which he, said that the way he writes he, and I actually, I liked a lot of Billy Collins's work.

He said, when he writes he begins by thinking, well, what's going to catch an audience's attention and draw them in? And I was listening to that and I thought, my God, that's the exact opposite of what I, the way I think of writing. And in fact, I went on to write a poem called To an Audience, just to explore that idea.

But I I do think what has happened in poetry with the rise of identity poetics is that this sense of poetry as a form of talking to yourself, which is I think the [00:44:00] what romanticism is. I think that represents a kind of re repudiation of that. 'cause identity poetry really is directed at an audience.

It's meant to affirm your connection to an audience. And that's what I've become very, I mean, I think it's fine if people want to write that, but it's just foreign to the way I think of poetry, and it really doesn't interest It's so taken over you know, poetry these days that it's kind of, well, I don't really care at my age because I'm 79 soon, but still, and so I've kind of done what I'm going to do, I guess anyway, but 

Andrea Hiott: you have a new book coming out, so you're still, it's still coming.

You never know how many more will come, but it's interesting what you say because that is a really different. Orientation, if you're orienting towards what are people, what do people want or something or what will get the most, what will resonate the most with the most people or something versus this more what [00:45:00] I think of what you do, which is subjective exploration of perspective, which it's almost like you're looking at one person or one part of yourself and trying to embody that and explore it.

John Koethe: Yes. No, that's right. That's the way I think of it. But again, with the proviso that you can talk to yourself about anything new. 

Andrea Hiott: Right. And also what you're talking with yourself about, all of that is patterned by the other conversations you've had with your teachers, the other poetry you've read. it's all, it's continuous in a similar way to what you're talking about with Wittgenstein. 

John Koethe: It is. And it's I'm very much I know Harold Bloom is somewhat controversial, but I'm very much, I mean, that's the way he thinks of poetry as a conversation with yourself and with other poets.

and I'm, I think that's absolutely right. 

Andrea Hiott: And you wouldn't think of philosophy this way. because I want to get to this idea of the problem, which, you talk about This word problem and about speculation, and we could talk about it from the position of, the [00:46:00] poet or the position of the philosopher, but it makes me think of, I, in one of the essays you talk about this idea of Heidegger this ultimate question of why is there something rather than nothing, and how you never really thought that was much of a question.

But then the way Wittgenstein oriented it, it gets to me to this thing we're trying to talk about, of this feeling of awe and of yes, of talking to yourself, realizing you're aware. That can go too far into the religious or It can be addressed philosophically too, but it's a different set of constraints, you might say, 

John Koethe: Well, I think, philosophy, I think of philosophy, and I think, I can't remember who, where I got the description from, nine to five philosophy, just someone once but I do think that nine to five philosophy is subject to constraints of coherence and consistency and relevance and, um, that, that poetry simply isn't constrained by and. It's, it is directed towards truth in some sense, though, of course, truth is a somewhat memorable. I'm a, philosophically, I'm kind of a [00:47:00] realist, so I really believe in, you know, a kind of coherent notion of truth, a kind of correspondence notion of truth. but I think both philosophy and poetry.

can originate in the some of the same impulses. It's just that philosophy pursues them with a goal towards towards truth and subject to certain constraints, whereas poetry is really more in kind of Concerned with feeling the force and spell of the, of those initial impulses and exploring them and trying to inhabit them.

I know that's kind of vague, but that's the way I. Not at all. I liked 

Andrea Hiott: that you brought up spell because there is a way in which the constraints of philosophy, it reminds me of your, you know. your fascination with the math and science and so on, that's a different way of it. Can we say they're [00:48:00] both investigations, but with different freedoms?

 I lost you for a minute. Are you there? Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. Can we say they're kind of investigations with different constraints and freedoms? 

John Koethe: I think so. I think so. the philosophies is more subject to those constraints. So. I mean, that Wittgenstein is the most important philosopher to me, and he certainly, you know, doesn't really conform to the model of nine to five philosophy.

so you have to read that with, in a fairly loose sense. So what he says about Heidegger is, I've always found very interesting because I I don't understand Heidegger and what I've tried to, but I don't. care for it that much. And I kind of share Bernard Williams suspicion that Heidegger is maybe the only important philosopher who's basically a fraud in some sense.

But you would think that Wittgenstein would react against [00:49:00] Heidegger negatively the way the positivists did. But he didn't really. And his, is one of his few remarks on Heidegger are quite sympathetic. And, you know, the question of, you know, Heidegger's obsessive question, why is there something rather than nothing?

Heidegger apparently thought it really was a question. And of course, for both Wittgenstein and the positivists, it wasn't really, it wasn't a real question, but Wittgenstein was actually sympathetic to it. what he thought, what, where he thought Heidegger went wrong was Treating it as a question when really it's an expression of a sense of awe at the existence of the world.

And that he thought was important and genuine. But if you then turn it into a question the way Heidinger seems to have, yes, that's wrong, and but it's something Stein was sympathetic to. It's just a matter of, [00:50:00] you know, mistaking this feeling of awe, which is important and genuine for a, a question, which isn't a judge, really a genuine question.

Andrea Hiott: that reminds me of a few things. earlier I was thinking about, in your poetry and also in the New York School, there's a playfulness that keeps things, um, in a space that doesn't get towards what I was talking about with illness, which can kind of happen in philosophy, who, the people who live philosophy fully, maybe in a Walter Kaufman kind of sense.

But the other thing is that, that, There's, I wanted to ask you about, do you ever in, I mean, you keep your poetry and your philosophy separate, or at least that's how I understood it. You did it like half a year, you would write the poetry and half a year the philosophy and. 

John Koethe: Yes, I did. I now after I retired from, um, from philosophy in, in, well, it was 2010, I guess, I, I've really [00:51:00] only written that paper on the mind body problem.

I haven't, I'm not really doing philosophy anymore, so I don't, but when I was doing philosophy, I would keep them separate, though, not because of I thought that they were somehow incompatible, but it's just that the way I write, wrote both poetry and philosophy was to throw myself into them for extended periods of time as I, when I first wrote that poem, Domes I start, I took developed this way of writing poetry, which was writing in small amounts over an extended period of time.

So I, I just need to inhabit that frame of mind in order to do it. 

Andrea Hiott: It's almost like putting yourself in two different modes of, I mean, I know you don't like this or you like it, but this idea of there being a happy world and an unhappy world being the same world for Wittgenstein, there could also be a poetic world and a philosophic world [00:52:00] being the same world, but you're almost you're not a different person in those worlds, but you are because you get into, it's, isn't it almost like a pattern or, yeah, 

John Koethe: it is that, but it's also just.

There's a more practical sense. When I was in college,

and at least initially at the same time, I'd work on philosophy and then I'd write a poem. But that's when I wrote poetry more quickly, and I'd finish something in, you know, a sitting or in a few days or something like that. It's just that when I started writing poems, this extended period of writing poems, I really had to sort of build myself up.

I do philosophy during the academic year and then in the spring I'd, and summer I'd switch to to poetry. And so it was in part because it's a different frame of mind, but it was really also for just because [00:53:00] of for practical reasons that I need to have the time to devote to.

Andrea Hiott: Well, We've talked about these different parts of you and these different parts of life and these different, and they seem like opposites, but we've also talked about kind of holding the paradox and how they're both different parts or different ways of understanding the same process, but what I wanted to ask you, and the reason I brought it up, is this notion of the sublime or what we were talking about with Wittgenstein is actually probably more accurate of the, um, of awe of the amazing fact that we can become self conscious and of self consciousness of consciousness.

This is important in your work. And I wonder when that. enters in because I know when you're writing sometimes it's in the shower when you're shaving that the ideas come and The idea of flow or being in awe where does that come in your life, how's that changed over time? 

John Koethe: I don't know. I don't know when it starts, but it's I think it's just I mean, it really is just remarkable the fact of Perspectival consciousness and self consciousness [00:54:00] is just a I mean, it seems just a miracle and we don't understand it. And and, it's really just astonishing. I know it's something that most people just take for granted, but I find it the most puzzling thing there, there is.

And I, I. You call 

Andrea Hiott: it the most common thing and the most unique, again, the paradigm. 

John Koethe: That's, and that's true of. Of human life. I mean, each person is utterly insignificant. At the same time, the most important thing there is, and that's true of each of us. And it, I think it's just a I don't know if you want to call it a paradox, but I don't know what else? 

Andrea Hiott: it's both two things being true at once. Where you don't need to, they don't, they seem irreconcilable, but they're not irreconcilable. Right. but I guess what I'm getting at too is that what role is, has that. Changed in your life or is this a practice towards because sometimes I feel like this disillusionment is the word you use But it can also feel like meditation what you do talk about in some of your writing.

It's almost as in practice, too

John Koethe: Yeah, I just [00:55:00] don't have any knowledge of that tradition though, I wouldn't be surprised if it is I just don't know anything about that first hand. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, in your own life, has it been a place you find, for some reason I'm thinking of the swimmer now, and there's this line of, I can't remember it very much right now, but the sense, the feeling I have of the line, is that you think you're alone, You think you're with others, but then you're just alone, what I'm trying to say is, has it helped you sit with your self, and also to access that place of just being aware of consciousness, and in awe of it, because there's a kind of orientation there, or practice to doing that to, to being able to sit with it and be aware of it in the sense of, oh my gosh, this is something amazing that doesn't come naturally for everyone.

John Koethe: Well, I guess it doesn't. I don't know. I don't know why it doesn't strike everyone as so strange, but but it, it does me. On the other hand, I'm [00:56:00] not a kind of, uh, I'm, You know, I enjoy people and I enjoy, you know, social life and having a good time and seeing other people.

So, I'm not at all kind of withdrawn or am a very private person in the sense of, you know, I have these, I think about these things, but I enjoy being with people so I'm not, uh, someone who likes to sort of withdraw from the world. 

Andrea Hiott: No, but I guess there's a tenderness in there that's, maybe it's easy for you to express in your normal life.

I don't know, but it, I don't think it's easy for most people to express. and it's something that when people read you, they can feel. without it being, without it completely overwhelming you, 

John Koethe: Well, that's nice. I'm glad to hear that. I mean, I'd like to think that's true, but I hope it is.

Andrea Hiott: Yeah. you know, this is love and philosophy. So when you think about the practice of poetry and [00:57:00] philosophy, even though they're different, and the ways you've said they're different are The ways in which we speculate and can answer that speculation through constraint and then the way we enact subjectivity and the way we've been talking in this embodied kind of perspectivalism. but I wonder how that word love, is it uncomfortable for you? Do you ever? Well, it's not. Yeah. does it connect to any of these? 

John Koethe: Well, it's not uncomfortable for me, but it is true that It's not my poetry is, has very little, is very little to do with you know, relations with other people, romantic relations that I've even my long poem Falling Water, which is the history of.

My marriage it's not really a psychological poem about our, you know, my relations with my ex wife though. the poet named Joshua Weiner said something about that poem, which seemed to me to be right. He said he, he thought it was the, the best [00:58:00] poem he knew about how what you are is.

the result of your past experiences in time and that's what it's really about. It's really about the feeling of, the passage of time. It's just that it embodies that in this marriage relation, but it's not really a therapeutic poem about you know, a history of a marriage or something.

Andrea Hiott: No, I don't think you use the word love very much a couple of times in the essays, maybe, but, um. Yeah. 

John Koethe: very little. and it's not that it's, I'd be, it'd be great if I could write about that more, but it's just something that, you know. 

Andrea Hiott: Well, weirdly, I think it's there. We didn't talk about it, but architecture, I think, is an important word and place, because, at least in the poetry um, a lot of it, your, it's a very subjective, as we said, exploration or investigation, without much constraint, and yet, the place constrains it or, I can tell you've[00:59:00] 

And there's some kind of interplay here where you're creating a kind of space where we can feel what I think of as love, which is this conversation or connection with ourselves and others? That is a continuity. I don't know how else to really say it, but. Yeah I wonder Are you thinking in in terms of architecture in place, like setting the constraints so that you can have no constraint? 

John Koethe: No, well, no, I think that's right. In fact, the last the concluding lines of the long poem, Falling Water I can't quite exactly, but I think it's something like the start of love and then the loss of love and all the intricate years between.

So it's about the years, but it's the year, what the years are framing is, you know, the course of this love, though it's not a love poem it. 

Andrea Hiott: I don't know. I mean, it's not a love poem in a Valentine's Day kind of way, but I'm not sure that love is [01:00:00] that, you know, I'm, I mean, it is something that's over time and that is oscillating in terms of our awareness of it, our awareness of it or our participation in it is a kind of oscillation of awareness and there's something about it. again, I keep thinking of water and swimming, but or submersion, or there's some kind of feeling reading your poetry of that being the space we're exploring. if that makes sense. 

John Koethe: I think so. I mean, the way I came to write that poem, Falling Water was when I was in the process of getting divorced, that's when I acquired this interest.

In arts and crafts, furniture and architecture. So the poem sort of coincides with that interest, and that's the subtext of the poem. Frank. Actually, there's a Frank Lloyd Wright house just around the corner for me where I'm sitting now. Oh, wow. So it's a history of this , but then the subtext is this the development of [01:01:00] arts and crafts architecture and, and art. So, um. I think that's what allows the poem to sort of hold together over that being so long. 

Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I, at least speaking just from my own feeling of reading you and what it's given me, I feel like I can go into a safe place and, um, be carried along a bit and think about things deeply and feel sort of safe about it.

And maybe that helps one to feel things strongly in, in, um, in doses that don't overwhelm. And yet, Are in that place of awe that we were talking about her love. I might even call it So that's just me to saying thank you to you actually. 

John Koethe: Oh Well, I hope I'm glad to hear that And all um, yeah, as I say some of these things are tied together a little more explicitly in this new [01:02:00] book Which I should be in two weeks.

I should be getting the Bound galley should be ready. I'd be happy to Have them send you one if you'd like. Yeah, I 

Andrea Hiott: can't wait to read it. 

John Koethe: And I can tell, send me your address and I'll tell the publisher to send you one.

Andrea Hiott: Okay, great, I will. Even if it's in the Netherlands, or should I give you my P. U. S.? Okay. 

John Koethe: It can be in the Netherlands. In fact, I think I mentioned Oh yeah, your 

Andrea Hiott: editor. 

John Koethe: No, 

He's in, I think he's in Belgium, but he translates. 

Andrea Hiott: Wonderful. really appreciate it. It's been wonderful to talk to you and Yeah, thank you for what you do in both these worlds of philosophy and poetry 

John Koethe: Okay, and send me your send me an address and i'll have them. 

Andrea Hiott: Okay, I will can't wait to read it And I hope you keep writing because yeah, it's wonderful.

I'm sure you will. We'll see All right. Well, have a good day there. Well, you too. All right. Bye. Bye

 Hey, everyone. I'm back to read a poem. [01:03:00] From John Koethe

from falling water on page 11, it's called the realm of end. As John and I talked about in the conversation, you just heard, he was very influenced by And signed. And I just noticed there's a phrase, in here. Nothing is hidden. From Vicenza. Um, it actually reappears many times in this book, but I hadn't really noticed or. connected it with In any case. 

Here is the point I 

opened to. today, when I was looking at this book and it seems fitting. For beyond dichotomy. It's called the realm of ends. I wish there were a state of being of a different kind, not compromised and caught between the twin extremes. Of something inconceivable and something else untrue. between the overarching heavens and the merely human. 

Some things are not to be sought after, in reality. Not even in the mind, but in a hidden region. Where the soul is free and unrestrained and thought proceeds like [01:04:00] weightless stars across an unseen sky. 

Oh, yes. 

I realized this inner paradise is just like time. Or other worlds ourselves and possibly remote or deep within. Another intimate illusion on the border of intelligence. a thing you have to touch and brush away. because nothing is hidden. These heavens are the only ones. 

There are an all-inclusive frame, displaying every aspect. of the real against an infinite night sky. The thick, dark, translucent color of obsidian. Yet in the wakefulness that comes towards Dawn. I still sometimes think of myself in a style of thinking whose trajectory must have once seemed clear.

But now seems loose, strange, and difficult to follow. As somehow distant from a universe of merely changing things eternal and the way each moment is 

and free the way each star becomes increasingly elusive once it crosses the Meridian.