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THE HOUSE ON BOULEVARD ST.
By: 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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