TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.
We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?
My poems have always been
action-packed. They move the way the mind does on a good day, puddle-jumping
from one topic to another and then coming in for a nice soft landing. That
said, I wanted to try some new moves here, so you’ll also see poems that might recall
the compactness of Jack Gilbert, the sweep of Allen Ginsberg, and the
exuberance of Frank O’Hara. I’m hoping readers will like both the familiar sounds
and the new ones as well.
What boundaries did you break
in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?
A few years ago, I caught myself
wondering why I wasn’t so crazy any more about some of my favorite living
poets. One day, the light bulb came on: they were still writing good poems, but
it was the same good poem over and over again. So I started trying for some new
sounds the way you do when you’re singing in the shower and pitch your voice
higher or lower.
I wrote so many Jack Gilbert
poems one summer that I told my wife Barbara I was afraid I was turning into
him. She told me to go ahead because sooner or later I’d incorporate what I was
learning from Jack Gilbert into what she calls “Dave Kirby poems,” which is
what happened. It didn’t take any special courage to make the change. All I had
to do is remember what I tell my students all the time, which is to try new
things.
Tell us a bit about the highs
and lows of your book’s road to publication.
I’m happy to say I went through
my lows years ago. When I won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1987, I
figured I had it made. What happened was just the opposite: I couldn’t get
anybody to even look at my next manuscript. Finally, tiny Orchises Press published
it and the several books that followed. I hated to say good-bye to Orchises,
but I switched to Louisiana State University Press because their distribution
system made it possible to get my books out more widely, and I’ve been with LSU
ever since.
James Long, my editor there, is
very tolerant of me, I think because my poetry collections sell in the hundreds
annually as opposed to the tens. That said, in the words of Bin Ramke, as a
poet you’re in a state of either absolute or relative obscurity. I’m clinging
to relative obscurity with all my might.
What’s your favorite piece of
writing advice?
Funny you should ask. In
addition to Help Me, Information,
I’ve just written a textbook that will also be released this summer; it’s modestly
entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come
From and How to Write Them. At its heart is the one thing I tell my
students over and over, which is that art is the deliberate transformed by the
accidental.
In other words, you make coffee,
lay out your pages, lick the tip of your pencil, and go at it like a tax
auditor until something – a phone call, a childhood memory, a cry in the street
– derails you. You go back to your task, but what you’re writing looks
different now. You’ve got to start deliberately, but you have to be open to the
accidents that will change your work for the better.
My favorite writing advice is
“write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of
this book?
Oh, heavens. Let me count the
ways. This is poetry, remember, so the surprises come fast and furious. I’m not
the Vin Diesel of American poetry, but when I said earlier that my poems tend
to be action-packed, that means I welcome all the twists and turns that occur
when you think you know what you’re doing, and pow! you get sent in a new
direction by pure serendipity. Maybe I am the Vin Diesel of American poetry. Or
the Samuel Taylor Coleridge whose “Kubla Khan” was famously knocked off the
tracks by a visitor from Porlock. Some writers do everything they can to avoid
interruptions, but I love them. They always jump-start a new line or
stanza.
How did you find the title of
your book?
I tried on a dozen titles. None
fit. For a while I called it A Baby in
the Piazza, which is one of those action-packed poems in the book (I’ll
include the link to it below). That title’s wings didn’t quite cover the whole
book, though. Then I remembered the first line of the second verse of Chuck
Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee,” which is “Help me, information,” and said aw,
yeah. Everything’s information, from a Wikipedia article to a dog’s tongue on
your face when you’re trying to sleep. Don’t we need all the help we can get? I
sure do.
Inquiring foodies and hungry
book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I
might share?)
Well, I do have a poem about/recipe for pruno in Help Me, Information. If that’s not a
beverage you drink regularly and serve to your guests, let me say that pruno is
an
alcoholic drink typically made from ingredients that might include apples,
oranges, fruit cocktail, candy, ketchup, sugar, milk, and crumbled bread. It’s made in prisons, where it can be concocted
with such limited equipment— a plastic bag, hot water, a sock—as is available to
the guests of the state who are its vintners. Fun! The name of the poem is
“Pruno,” by the way.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK:
https://lsupress.org/books/detail/help-me-information/
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN
TBR STACK: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=david+kirby+help+me+information&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “A
Baby in the Piazza”:
https://kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2020-janfeb/selections/david-kirby-763879/