A talk with Tallahassee's literary power couple: The Muse and Patsy the cat are with them

Marina Brown
Democrat correspondent
Barbara Hamby and David Kirby in the backyard of their Tallahassee home Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. David Kirby is set to launch two new books at Midtown Reader at 7 p.m. Nov. 4.

Two artistes. Two high strung creatives. Two temperamental literati whose bulging egos cause frequent accidents around the house. 

Well, we don’t know where those people live, but they certainly wouldn’t be friends with wife and husband, Barbara Hamby and David Kirby, two prodigious writing talents who are among the most welcoming, funny, easy-going, and relatable people a Tallahasseean from any walk of life could meet.

With 32 volumes of poetry, essays, criticism, even works for children, and now a new text book to add to his bio, FSU’s Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English  David Kirby is set to launch two new books at Midtown Reader at 7 p.m. Nov. 4.

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"Help Me, Information," is a book of his exuberant poetry, and "The Knowledge, Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them," is a 440-page tome encompassing the wisdom of Kirby’s over-52-year career teaching the art and how to engage the Muse.

So, we know that Kirby has been busy. And sitting next to him at a table beneath the century oak that embraces their gabled brick cottage like a massive and perhaps overly-protective lover, Barbara Hamby thumbs through her own newly-released volume of poetry, "Holoholo," a collection of odes (don’t worry, here odes are fun or touching to read and not intimidating at all) that she says operates as a kind of ancient conversation wherein the question is asked: “What’s going on here?”

She means “in life.” How can it be both beautiful and terrible, a mysterious dance between life and death? And Hamby does it, much as Kirby, in a style that is at once conversational, chatty, stream-of-consciousness-like, erudite as all get-out, and which finishes you off with a thought-stopping nugget to carry with you.

Barbara Hamby and David Kirby in the backyard of their Tallahassee home Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021.

'The poetry store is always open'

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

Though it's only 11 in the morning, and they both seem to have recently finished off their first cups of coffee, and the huntress, Patsy the Cat, is insistently making herself available for a scratch, the couple is still able to discuss their poetry, its genesis, Italy in particular, and perhaps 60 or 70 other factoids that waltz in and out of their conversation. Here is a bit of it they shared:

Democrat to Hamby: If you were teaching David’s poetry, what would you point out to students?  “Well, with him, the poetry store is always open. He’s said, ‘People like to go on a full roller coaster of emotions.’ David likes to get the cars in motion.’ He invites students to engage with everything… gives them ‘permission’ to write about anything.”

Kirby interrupts here to tell about going to the blood bank the other day to donate. “The phlebotomist saw I was wearing a ring with the stylized head of Frankenstein, and asked if that were James Brown. I told her no, but I’d written about him in a poem. And she said, “Oh can you do that?”  

Kirby hopes that maybe the phlebotomist received an admission ticket into the world of poetry with just such demystifying, such an offering of accessibility.

FSU professor David Kirby, shown at a reading in 2019, is set to launch two new books at Midtown Reader at 7 p.m. Nov. 4: "Help Me, Information," is a book of his exuberant poetry, and "The Knowledge, Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them."

Democrat to Kirby: What would you say about Barbara’s poetry? “Barbara is word-drunk. She leaps from word to word with the speed of a mountain goat…she makes you tipsy.” He adds, “We both like to bring an air of excitement to our writing… what excites us… then bring the reader along. Yes, you say we allude to lots of facts, people, writing, outside information in our work, but we want to bring the reader along on our “walk,” as if we’re saying, “Here, look at this, you might like it… it’s an exchange of tips….”

Writing from two ends of the table

Democrat: Do you ever write poems together? Is that even possible? Hamby says, “When we’re in Italy (at FSU’s Florence Program, and where they’ve been going since their honeymoon in 1992) we sit at one long table in a palazzo where it’s said opera was “invented.” We sit, one at each end. We may write the whole morning. We may even be writing about the same thing, but it will be a different take, each with a different perspective.”

Democrat: Can you say more about the process of writing poetry? How you start? When you know the poem is finished?

In a short explanation where she quotes or references 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 have to find the rhythm of the voice, not only in words, but in its music too. When that settles in, the poem can flow. It writes itself. It often happens with a change of settings… for instance to Italy. It’s like opening up a poetry store there. Most of Holoholo (which takes place in Hawaii) was written in Florence.”

Barbara Hamby, shown here in a file photo, has a newly-released volume of poetry, "Holoholo," a collection of odes. "Most of Holoholo (which takes place in Hawaii) was written in Florence," says Hamby.

Kirby says, “I’m like a magpie…picking up every shiny object I see. Then my poems become ‘mind travelogues’ that might take you anywhere.” As he stares into the leafy branches overhead, Kirby takes a listener along on a kind of mental thought-detour, rather like the ones he travels in poems.

On this one, he visits Salvador Dali’s pet ant-eater, which turns out wasn’t an ant-eater, but an ocelot, which actually don’t make good pets, because of evolution, and of course, Darwin, and naturally, the whole progress of mankind since then… and so on. He says, “I wouldn’t call the completion of a poem revising or reworking, I’d say it’s like kneading dough until it’s done.”

Let's rock 'n' roll 

Democrat: So, what is the poet’s job?    

Kirby: “To make mountains out of mole hills.” 

Hamby: “To always be on the alert. Everything can show up in a poem… everything.”

Kirby: “To amplify and weave together thoughts. To walk through somebody’s consciousness.

Hamby: “I never want to know the ending ahead… I want to wait…”

And finally, with Patsy’s having deposited a non-living rodent-gift somewhere near, it’s time to draw our chat to an end. But the Democrat couldn’t resist four last quickie questions. Their responses, in absolute accord, say it all:

Which would you choose: Gardening or rock and roll? Rock 'n' roll!

Cooking together or playing the guitar? Cooking together

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

Sipping prosecco with Barbara/David at twilight or publication of your next volume of poems? Definitely sipping prosecco!

The public is invited to hear David Kirby read from his new volume of poetry, Help Me, Information at Midtown Reader November 4 at 7PM.  Both of his new books, as well as Barbara Hamby’s Holoholo, are available at the bookstore. He will conduct a cross-genre creativity workshop at Midtown Reader on 3/10/2022 based on his textbook, The Knowledge.

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

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If you go

What: The public is invited to hear David Kirby read from his new volume of poetry, Help Me, Information; Kirby will conduct a cross-genre creativity workshop on March 10, 2022 based on his textbook, "The Knowledge"

When: 7 p.m. Nov. 4

Where: Midtown Reader, 1123 Thomasville Road. Both of Kirby's new books, as well as Barbara Hamby’s "Holoholo," are available at the bookstore