Vicarious Melancholia by John Koethe

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 10, 2015   Vicarious Melancholia   John Koethe

It fills up the space where poems used to be, Until there’s no space left. It’s incessant Phone calls, figuring out money and flights to Somewhere, nowhere, not knowing what comes next: There’s nowhere to go, which is the problem (I think everything’s the problem) taking its toll.  Diane looked at me cross-eyed at lunch and I sunk Into a depression I recalled from forty years ago: The constant consciousness of helplessness; The constant feeling of inevitability, of the anger At that feeling; of the separateness of persons. Talk is like drugs, repeating what I said each night In the morning, and on the phone each afternoon: A different hospital each time, then the same hospital. A fear of selfishness, an imperative of self-defense: These are the boundaries of my life now, The borderlines of my existence for a while.   “In the midst of life we are in death.” Any Person’s death diminishes me, and yet the fear of Death is something one can only face alone. Poetry is stylized indifference, a drawing back From the divide between my life and its negation— Not because it’s empty, but because it’s full, too full, Full of someone else’s. Coming home each day To the message light blinking on the phone, My heart sinks as I press the button, and the dial tone Comes as a relief, since I don’t know what to do. It’s easier in miniature, within the limits of the page, The confines of a single consciousness, with the drama All offstage until the phone rings, and it starts again.            Copyright © 2015 by John Koethe. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Vicarious Melancholia’ was an attempt to capture some of the claustrophobic feelings associated with a difficult personal situation—I figured I might as well try to get something out of it. One model for the kind of mounting anxiety in the poem was Eliot’s prose poem ‘Hysteria.’” —John Koethe   John Koethe is the author of ROTC KILLS (Harper Perennial, 2012). A new book of poems, The Swimmer, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux next year.  He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   Photo credit: Tom Bamberger Most Recent Book by Koethe   ROTC KILLS (Harper Perennial, 2012) "Why Poetry Can Be Hard for Most People" by Dorothea Lasky "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot "Song" by Dan Beachy-Quick Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038