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.
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Other poets his age would write about death, but Kirby chooses the afterlife. That’s hardly surprising, for he likes variety, and that the afterlife’s many locales afford. Kirby sights his parents on the street and in the supermarket, but as Homer, Virgil, and Dante have told us, most dead folks are in some over- or underworld. Fortunately, you can visit them there, though you may never catch up with strolling departed parents here. You just need a psychopomp. Dante had Virgil, and Kirby chooses Elvis, who would take him to see the same gods Dante saw as well as a thoroughly modern set of dead heroes, including Jimi and Janis. As that précis of the opening poem here, “Elvis, Be My Psychopomp,” suggests, Kirby’s daft humor is much in evidence again. But a slightly sadder-than-usual music accompanies most of these poems, which range through history, literature, and philosophy and all over Europe and America as well as down the page in verse paragraphs rattling with Kirby’s irrepressible raconteur’s charm. --Ray Olson
Review
“David Kirby is a master conversationalist, a witty and deep feeling thinker, part Mel Brooks, part Virgil, dazzling in his range of tone and reference, in his surprising, often zany, yet always satisfying turns from observation to rumination, from elegy to comedy. The Temple Gate Called Beautiful is one of the most moving and entertaining books I’ve ever read.”—Alan Shapiro
". . . it's hard to realize that [The Temple Gate Called Beautiful,/i>] isn't the comic monologue of a Renaissance-trained professor drenched in Monty Python reruns. But there is indeed a strong sense of form—long lines in carefully shaped stanzas—and the underlying rhythms evoke marvelous late-night conversations. Sure, one-sided ones, but with someone whose mind is so stuffed that every quip becomes a set of metaphors feeding into an Escher staircase that's headed back to the opening of the poem in spite of racing away from it."—Beth Kanell, Kingdom Books
"David Kirby is the rare poet who juxtaposes humor and satire with a serious academic and classical knowledge without pandering exclusively to one or the other. It is a balancing act that is quite successful because it appears effortless . . . These mini-epic poems demonstrate a mastery of the turn of phrase, leading us onward toward Kirby’s inevitably laugh-filled punch lines, little bits of heaven left behind for us to contemplate in the here and now."—NewPages
". . .a rarified world, one rendered through the eyes of a keen intelligence."—Library Journal
"In The Temple Gate Called Beautiful, David Kirby tackles the afterlife, pinning it down and tickling it until he gets answers. Each poem is a miraculous, hilarious, profound labyrinth. Surrender to these Kirby-esque journeys and when you pop out into the white space beyond each of his poems' triumphant last lines, you will see for yourself a glimpse of heaven."—Denise Duhamel
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Less Fulfilling Kirby,
By
This review is from: The Temple Gate Called Beautiful (Paperback)
David Kirby's poems are marked by a unique expansiveness: within their sprawling lines, they bring together disparate facts, personalities, movies, literature, and more, and somehow show that not only are all these things connected, but they reveal something deeply personal about us, too. In his offhand alchemy, Kirby seems to seek nothing and find everything, and even get some laughs while he's at it.
His new collection, "The Temple Gate Called Beautiful," has moments like this. But--perhaps because his influences here include Dante and Virgil, among others--there are many poems in which he confronts questions of the spiritual much more baldly than usual, in the process revealing his own religious judgments in a way that will not be attractive to all readers. Case in point: in the first stanza of the poem "Hello, I Must Be Going" (pages 40-46), Kirby insists that "this will not...be one more crappy poem about a dying mother!" But that is, in fact, his main theme, and he handles it bluntly, without the subtlety of his earlier poem "On My Mother's Blindness" (from The Ha-Ha). In addition, the poem is built on Kirby's own assumptions about the afterlife and the nature of death. This is not in itself bad, but the extent to which these assumptions suffuse the poem's six rambling pages may alienate readers who do not share Kirby's views--and this lack of universality causes this poem (and others in this book) to lack some poignancy; to feel, sometimes, almost polemical. I am by no means condemning Mr. Kirby for having his own spiritual views, nor for letting them inform his poems. But I do feel that this choice on his part makes this volume of poems less accessible than previous collections. I can't shake the sense that he was aiming for something more like Czselaw Milosz's "Encounter," reprinted in full on a page of this book: communicating the awe and mystery of our lives in the most delicate way. At the same time, though, perhaps this book represents a transition. Though the poems are often bogged down by Kirby's self-consciously weighty contemplations, they still have much of the daily-ness and mordant humor that characterize his best work. If, in his next collection, say, he successfully melds his trademark casual tone with the profundity he reaches for here, he may achieve a new poetry for himself. And that would be a boon to his readers. ~
5.0 out of 5 stars
David Kirby still has that flexible mind and ready sense of humor,
By Jessica Weissman "poet and computer programmer" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Temple Gate Called Beautiful (Paperback)
Not just prose chopped into lines, but funny too. Kirby's mind ranges from connection to connection to shape incidents into funny stories. Helps if you know most of the same cultural references he does, but that's true of the Young Turks too.
Kirby is always good company, and this book is a bit deeper than some of his first.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
