Tallahassee’s literary power couple tries to reinforce poetry, to demystify it

Two artists. Two highly excited creatives. Two spirited writers whose bulging egos often lead to accidents in the house.

Well, we don’t know where these people live, but they certainly wouldn’t be friends with wife and husband, Barbara Hamby and David Kirby, two amazing writing talents who are some of the most hospitable, funniest, easy-going, and relatable people a Tallahasseean from could affect all walks of life.

With 32 volumes of poetry, essays, reviews and even works for children and now a new textbook for his biography, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English from FSU, David Kirby, will have two new books in Midtown Reader at 7. bring out November 4th at o’clock.

Opera:FSU Opera disguises itself for Halloween with Mozart’s classic story of good and evil

A book:Flowing Cathedrals: Book pays homage to Florida’s lush rivers

Things to do:Try the fizzy brew from FAMU Homecoming, Mr. Sipp, and Halloween

“Help Me, Information” is a book of his exuberant poems, and “The Knowledge, Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them” is a 440-page tome that draws the wisdom of Kirby’s over 52-year career as a teacher of the arts and how to involve the muse.

So we know Kirby was busy. And sitting next to him at a table under the centuries-old oak that hugs her gabled brick house like a massive and perhaps to be protected lover, Barbara Hamby flips through her newly published volume of poetry “Holoholo”, a collection of odes (don’t worry, odes are funny or touching to read and not at all intimidating) which, as she says, functions as a kind of ancient conversation where the question is asked, “What’s going on here?”

It means “in life”. How can it be beautiful and terrible at the same time, a mysterious dance between life and death? And Hamby, much like Kirby, does it in a style that is talkative, talkative, stream-of-consciousness-like at the same time, taught like anything, and that gets you down with a mind-stopping nugget to take away.

“The poetry shop is always open”

Hamby, Senior Lecturer / Distinguished University Scholar at FSU and Guggenheim Fellow, has written her own nine books of poems, essays and short stories and published them in the New Yorker and Paris Review, among others. A novel is currently with an agent in New York.

Even though it’s only 11 a.m. and the two have apparently recently finished their first cup of coffee and the slayer Patsy the Cat persistently stands up for a scratch, the couple can still discuss their poems. its emergence, Italy in particular, and maybe 60 or 70 other factoids that go in and out of their conversations. Here’s a bit of it that they shared:

Democrat to Hamby: If you were teaching David’s poetry what would you say to the students? “Well, his poetry shop is always open. He said, “People like to experience a roller coaster of emotions.” David likes to get the cars moving. ‘ He invites students to deal with anything … gives them ‘permission’ to write about anything. “

Kirby stops here to say he recently went to the blood bank to donate. “The phlebotomist saw that I was wearing a ring with the stylized head of Frankenstein and asked if it was James Brown. I said no, but I wrote about him in a poem. And she said, “Oh, can you do that?”

Kirby hopes that with such a demystification, such an offer of accessibility, the phlebotomist may have got a ticket into the world of poetry.

Democrat to Kirby: What would you say about Barbara’s poems? “Barbara is drunk on words. It jumps from word to word at the speed of a mountain goat … it makes you tipsy. “He adds,” We both want to add a touch of excitement to our writing … which excites us … then we bring the reader with us. Yes, you say we allude to a lot of facts, people, scriptures and information from outside in our work, but we want to take the reader on our “walk” as if we were saying, “Here, look at this, you “Maybe you like it … it’s an exchange of tips …”

Write two ends of the table

democrat: Do you ever write poetry together? Is that even possible? Hamby says: “When we are in Italy (on FSU’s Florence program and where they have been going since their honeymoon in 1992) we sit at a long table in a palazzo where opera was“ invented ”. We are seated, one at each end. We can write all morning. We may even write about the same thing, but it will be a different mindset, each with a different perspective. “

democrat: Can you say more about the poem writing process? How do you start When you know the poem is done?

In a brief statement quoting or quoting Ovid, Horace, Keats, Wolf, Ginsberg’s Howl, Monteverde, and the fact that there are 500 Anglo-Saxon words in the English language, Hamby says, “I don’t need the rhythm of the voice only in words, but also in their music. When that happens, the poem can flow. It writes itself. It often happens when there is a change in attitudes … for example to Italy. It’s like opening a poetry shop there. Most of Holoholo (which is set in Hawaii) was written in Florence. “

Says Kirby, “I’m like a magpie … who picks up every shiny object I see. Then my poems become ‘mind travelogues’ that can take you anywhere. ”As he stares into the leafy branches above his head, Kirby takes a listener on a kind of thought detour, similar to what he does in poetry.

In this case, he visits Salvador Dali’s pet ant-eater, who turns out to be not an ant-eater, but an ocelot, which due to evolution actually cannot make good pets, and of course Darwin and of course, all of human progress since then … and so on. He says, “I wouldn’t call the completion of a poem a revision or a revision, I would say it’s like kneading dough until it’s done.”

Let’s rock

Democrat: So what is the poet’s job?

Kirby: “To make mountains out of molehills.”

Hamby: “To always be on your guard. Anything can appear in a poem … anything. “

Kirby: “To reinforce and weave thoughts. Going through someone’s consciousness.

Hamby: “I never want to know the end before … I want to wait …”

Finally, with Patsy leaving a dead rodent present somewhere nearby, it’s time to end our conversation. But the Democrat couldn’t resist the last four quickie questions. Your answers in perfect agreement say it all:

Which would you choose: gardening or rock and roll? Rock ‘n’ roll!

Cooking together or playing the guitar? Cook together

Retirement in Florence or “feet first” from FSU? Feet first!

Sipping Prosecco in the twilight with Barbara / David or publishing the next volume of poetry? Definitely sip Prosecco!

The public is invited to have David Kirby read Information from his new collection of poems Help Me, Information aloud at Midtown Reader on November 4th at 7:00 p.m. His two new books and Barbara Hamby’s Holoholo are available in bookshops. On March 10th, 2022 he will conduct a cross-genre creativity workshop in Midtown Reader based on his textbook The Knowledge.

Contact Marina Brown at mcdb100@comcast.net. Brown is the author of the 2020 gold medal-winning RPLA Book of the Year, The Orphan of Pitigliano, and the newly released When Women Dance With Trees

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When you go

What: The public is invited to have David Kirby read from his new collection of poems Help Me, Information; Kirby will host a cross-genre creativity workshop based on his textbook “The Knowledge” on March 10, 2022.

When: 7 p.m. November 4th

Where: Midtown Reader, 1123 Thomasville Road. Both of Kirby’s new books and Barbara Hamby’s “Holoholo” are available in the bookstore

The post Tallahassee’s literary power couple tries to reinforce poetry, to demystify it first appeared on Daily Florida Press.

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