News at Eleven: Here, as in so much of his work,

[John] Koethe sounds like his idol John Ashbery, but where Ashbery's grand, wistful visions are always dissolving at the edge of sense, Koethe values clarity even when confronting a world that only seems to be clear, as when he writes of his parents: "They're both dead now,/And all I have to wrestle with are words, and yet these/Syllables bring back the feeling of those summer afternoons."

That said, ROTC Kills can be a baffling book, in which acceptance can border on indifference and memory can be its own justification.

from Slate: Use Your Illusions

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