Long-lined
and often laugh-out-loud funny, these poems encompass
many things, including the heated restlessness of
youth, the mixed blessings of self-imposed exile,
and the settled pleasures of home.
David Kirby is the
Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English
at Florida State University. His work appears regularly
in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart
Prize anthologies, and he has received fellowships
from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Arts. Philip Levine says, "The world
that Kirby takes into his imagination and the one
that arises from it merge to become a creation like
no other, something like the world we inhabit but
funnier and more full of wonder and terror. He has
evolved a poetic vision that seems able to include
anything, and when he lets it sweep him across the
face of Europe and America, the results are astonishing.”
He is married to the poet Barbara Hamby and lives
in Tallahassee.
