The Temple Gate Called Beautiful

by David K. Kirby

David Kirby’s hilarious, poignant ninth collection of poetry opens with Elvis as Virgil guiding us through the afterlife, imagines where the dead go when they die, what they wear when they get there, and whether Heaven or Hell throws a better party.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2008

Reviews

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I enjoyed reading these dense, surprising poems the first time and will enjoy re-reading them. I like the tendency of the poem to get away from the poet yet circle right back in a way I don't expect.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit some skepticism about the book after reading the first few poems, which felt like forced syntheses with Dante and Odysseus, and just being silly with them, but not so smart silly. However, I am such a sucker for gargantuan poems like this. It can be so entertaining to roam around all the ideas and places that Kirby is going to take me.

Why, though, does the speaker end up having to be such a wise guy? And I mean wise guy like the cartoon version of Groucho Marx doing that eyebrow thing. And why does it seem like the speaker wants so badly to pose in his vast library of books as an anti-intellectual? The irony is just a little flat. It seems to me there can be a genuine embrace of these books without putting it at such a distance from the speaker.

[Liam Malone · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was daunted by the sheer length of these poems, I thought are these going to be the ejaculations of professor lording over PhD candidates? (He did over a friend of mine in 1986.) But he sold me on his mythic references, which I enjoyed being an amateur classicist and being MAed from Florida State Classics Dept. I enjoyed every poem and got into the prose poetic effect, they felt like short stories to me. And, as I am in my early 50s I think about death as he does in many of these and loss of loved one and what is the afterlife like. Living in Wash DC made his political allusions fun too.
I think I'd buy and read another collection by Kirby.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wish i WERE david kirby

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Kirby's books go, this one is my favorite.

[Margaret Adams]

These poems were a mix of freewheeling whimsy and piercing earnestness. I'm putting more Kirby poems in my library queue.