What do you think?
Rate this book
The House of Blue Light: Poems
The House of Blue Light is the second collection of autobiographical “memory poems” by Catholic-school-boy-gone-bad-turned-poet-made-good David Kirby, a stand-up comic of verse if ever there was one: “in Stardust Memories . . . these wise space aliens who visit Earth . . . tell [Woody Allen] that if he really wants to serve humanity, / he should tell funnier jokes―wait, that’s my duty, / I think, that’s my public duty! Because sooner or later, / we all turn upside down.”
Wearing both heart and wit on his sleeve, Kirby confides in longish narrative poems events he actually or vicariously experienced―as a child, a teen, a young man, and now―as well as some future scenes he imagines. Literary theorists Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes; Little Richard and Muhammad Ali; Herman Melville, James Dickey, and Henry James; friends, family, personal heroes, and acquaintances, including the Ah Oui Girl of Paris and Tige Watley’s Whoah of Baton Rouge, are all equally alive in Kirby’s poems.
As Walt Whitman did, Kirby offers a first-person speaker as a proxy for everyone else (“Who, including ourselves, / knows what we know and when we know it?”), achieving a unity and accessible authenticity rare in poetry. A fun house, “a mishmash for sure,” The House of Blue Light is a delightfully entertaining, irreverent, erudite collection of commentary piling upon commentary that brings us “that one element so largely absent / from our quotidian existence, i.e., surprise.”
Wearing both heart and wit on his sleeve, Kirby confides in longish narrative poems events he actually or vicariously experienced―as a child, a teen, a young man, and now―as well as some future scenes he imagines. Literary theorists Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes; Little Richard and Muhammad Ali; Herman Melville, James Dickey, and Henry James; friends, family, personal heroes, and acquaintances, including the Ah Oui Girl of Paris and Tige Watley’s Whoah of Baton Rouge, are all equally alive in Kirby’s poems.
As Walt Whitman did, Kirby offers a first-person speaker as a proxy for everyone else (“Who, including ourselves, / knows what we know and when we know it?”), achieving a unity and accessible authenticity rare in poetry. A fun house, “a mishmash for sure,” The House of Blue Light is a delightfully entertaining, irreverent, erudite collection of commentary piling upon commentary that brings us “that one element so largely absent / from our quotidian existence, i.e., surprise.”
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2000
2 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 23, 2009
Kirby has such an interesting style--he uses long long lines and a relaxed, conversational tone. Reading Kirby is like listening to someone who's had just enough to drink that he's got lots to say and eventually almost without noticing he gets around to saying something oddly profound. (Although obviously Kirby's profundity is much more intentional than your tipsy friend's.) I liked this book very much.
January 29, 2008
My favorite poet and favorite teacher!
April 15, 2008
My biggest regret from college is not having DK for a professor. Wipe yourself.
March 6, 2015
Biily Collins says that David Kirby knows how to turn over the cards of the poem at just the right time and in just the right order. I agree.
July 27, 2007
Good. He's doing some very interesting and innovative things with the narrative.
March 14, 2010
This probably deserves more than 3 stars, but I think I am just not a poetry person. It is a writing form that I have never been able to immerse myself in, and I either spend most of my time trying to figure out the deeper meaning or feeling like I'm missing something. It is a fault of mine, not this author's, but for me it wasn't more than 3 stars. I think Dr. Seuss is about as poetic as I can handle!
February 2, 2009
The word choice and imagery is good; the rhythm is off, I think. Lots of rambling.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews