| 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Poetry
2007 Gold Medal in Poetry from the Florida Book Awards
The poems in The House on Boulevard St. were written
within earshot of David Kirby's Old World masters, Shakespeare
and Dante. From the former, Kirby takes the compositional
method of organizing not only the whole book but also each
separate section as a dream; from the latter, a three-part
scheme that gives the book rough symmetry. Long-lined and
often laugh-aloud funny, Kirby's poems are ample steamer trunks
into which the poet seems to be able to put just about anything—the
heated restlessness of youth, the mixed blessings of self-imposed
exile, the settled pleasures of home. As the poet Philip Levine
says, "the world that Kirby takes into his imagination and
the one that arises from it merge to become a creation like
no other, something like the world we inhabit but funnier
and more full of wonder and terror. He has evolved a poetic
vision that seems able to include anything, and when he lets
it sweep him across the face of Europe and America, the results
are astonishing."
. . . far from being harmed by lacunae and uncertainties,
poetry is actually helped by them,
so here goes: "La beauté sera convulsive ou ne sera pas,"
said André Breton, and let love too
be convulsive or let it not be at all. Chaps, let us rise above the hermit crabsand hermits and old blind dogs, for when we invent our truest selves,
the lovers we deserve will appear.
Therefore let us learn another language. Let us set our hair on fire
and charge into battle against a numberless foe.
Let us sail upriver. Let us eat shit, drink blood, choke on pleasure. I hear America singing; it sounds like Little Richard.
He says, When she winks an eye,
the bread slice turn to toast, and I dream of Jayne Mansfield.
He says, When she smiles, the beefsteak
become well done, and I dream of Mamie Van Doren, Cyd Charisse. “For Men Only” published in The House on Boulevard St. by David Kirby.
Copyright © 2007 by David Kirby. All rights reserved.
The Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English
at Florida State University, David Kirby is the author
of numerous books, including the poetry collections The
Ha-Ha and The House of Blue Light. He is a recipient
of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry and a Guggenheim fellowship,
among other honors. He and his wife, poet Barbara Hamby, live
in Tallahassee. |
