ROTC Kills

Author: John Koethe

Publisher: Harper Perennial (2012)

ROTC Kills is a lyrical and arresting new collection from renowned poet John Koethe, 2011 winner of the Arts and Letters Award and the Lenore Marshall Prize for the year’s outstanding work of poetry. As typified by the provocative title piece—a wistful look back at the poet’s years at Harvard University in the late sixties—the poetry and prose within evoke the memories and dreams; the literature, popular culture, and philosophy of a generation through the lens of the poet’s personal history. In the grand tradition of Wordsworth, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery, ROTC Kills is an important work from a major American poet.

“[A] visionary new book of poems and prose meditations.”

–Susan Stewart

“John Koethe’s poems…are profound meditations on time and the curious hold it has on the human psyche. In them, even the most extreme exertions of consciousness are transformed into the faultless measures of clear and beautiful speech.”

–American Academy of Arts and Letters