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The House on Boulevard St.
David Kirby
New and Selected Poems
Southern Messenger Poets
Louisiana State University Press
March 2007
On Sale: March 1, 2007
151 pages
ISBN: 0807132152
EAN: 9780807132159
Paperback
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Historical
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."
How beautiful is the shadow these Spanish call duende, how
like it is to the food we crave when we are weepy and
spent, want to chew our bodies up whole and swallow
them, to fill a museum with the cries of the dying. No
wonder Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, as did
Paganini. Or that Buddy Holly played his best set the last
night of the Winter Dance Party tour, and then the little
plane crashed in the Iowa cornfield. No wonder that, as
the joke has it, the redneck's last words were, "Y'all
watch this!" Or that the final thing the general said to his
troops Was, "On your feet, you cowards, their artillery
can't possibly reach us at this dist--." Sometimes I wish I
had a machine gun. But I want language, too, history,
jokes. Recorded music. Hot meals. I like
libraries, theaters, bookstores, though sometimes at
night when I'm walking through this city, the wind will
blow the leaves past my feet, and I'll hear a howl a few
streets over and I'll think That's a dog and then That's my
dog and then That's me. From "The Winter Dance Party"
published in The House on Boulevard St. by David Kirby.
Copyright © 2007 by David Kirby. All rights reserved.
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