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"David Kirby says that he walks into a poem the way he walks out his door, which is to say he lets the walk take him and not vice versa. Thus, his style hasn't evolved so much as started and stopped, taken a sharp turn and doubled back on itself, tripped over its own feet, and even disappeared. The Winter Dance Party: Poems, 1983-2023 lays out, not someone's entire life, but that person's life as a poet. This book is made up mainly of new poems along with a generous number of older ones alternating with one another in nine sections that proceed, not chronologically, but more like chapters in a surreal memoir, with long poems followed by short poems, exploratory formats next to more traditional ones, straightforward poems cheek by jowl with ones that are more allusive. The volume also includes two essays that Kirby regards as containing everything he has learned in a lifetime of writing and in open. Step through, reader-adventures await you"--
About the author
David Kirby teaches at Florida State University, where he is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English. His many books include
Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll, described by the
Times Literary Supplement as "a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense." In 2016, Kirby received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Florida Humanities, which called him "a literary treasure of our state."
