David Kirby

I went to David Kirby's reading at the Kansas City Art Institute tonight. There was a fairly large turnout...mostly art institute students through. I've read Kirby's work before and it is littered with obscure (and less obscure) literary and pop culture references. He has a very stream of consciousness style which can be difficult to follow but very rewarding if you stick with the poem. But hearing him read the poems brought the poems I've read to life and added an even greater texture to the language, narrative, etc. David Kirby appears to love language, narrative, story-telling, pop culture, literature, and he has tones of fun with each of them as he weaves in-and-out of different threads within the same poem. It was fun listening to him read. The reading made me appreciate his work a whole lot more...so much so that I bought his most recent book: The House on Boulevard Street: New and Selected Poems (LSU press).