Poetry By David Kirby

       Nicholas_T CC



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The Wedding Breakfast

every year my parents had this big party to celebrate their anniversary
they called it a wedding breakfast
only it took place at noon
I never got that
what time would you have to get married to have breakfast at noon
like eight a.m. say

and then I learned it was an English custom
and it was called a wedding breakfast 
because it was the first meal a couple had together after the ceremony
no matter what time they got married

my parents weren’t English

anyway that’s my parents for you
now how about you poets
how you doing today

that poem you’re working on isn’t for you you know
it’s a gift
you know how gifts work right
tube socks
bad gift
fat-wheel Schwinn bicycle with red fenders 
and a little bell on the handlebars
priceless

quirky subject matters help
don’t just write about breakups and sunsets
cannibal nuns are good
I’d love to read a poem about cannibal nuns

tension’s good too
Flannery O’Connor tells us her subject
is the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil
now you’re talking Flannery
                        
add some mystery so the reader can play along
Stephen Greenblatt says Hamlet was a breakthrough for Shakespeare
that he could deepen the effect of his plays by taking out 
a key explanatory element
like why is Hamlet as crazy as a rat in a coffee can
in that way Shakespeare released an enormous energy 
that would have been blocked 
by an explanation that made sense
not too much mystery though
just the right amount

then there’s the Peggy Lee song Is That All There Is
sung from the viewpoint of a woman
who recalls seeing her family home burn down as a child
and going to a circus
and falling in love for the first time
and in each case
thinking is that all there is
which you can take as a jaded or cynical attitude toward life
or one that says why worry
let’s break out the booze and have a ball
if that’s all there is

you poets shouldn’t try to be smart
readers don’t like that
we hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us says Keats
God walks out of the room when poets try to be smart

let the image do the heavy lifting
here let’s make one up
let’s start with a little kid
let’s say he lives on a farm somewhere in the Midwest
but he loves baseball more than life itself
there’s not a thing about baseball he doesn’t like
so let’s say it’s summer
and of course it’s night time
and his parents told him to go to sleep
but he’s listening to a game in Chicago or Kansas City
and the signal on his crummy little radio is fading in and out
and he thinks he hears the crack of a bat
but wonders if it’s just the sizzle of static from a distant lightning bolt

and there’s your image
but don’t you see the bedroom as well
it’s on the second story of an old Victorian house
and there’s a hallway
leading to some stairs with a thick wooden bannister
that take you to the kitchen where the mom is stirring the sour-dough starter
so she can make bread the next day
and the dad is at his desk thinking about the rise in feed prices
and whether or not he’ll need to hire more hands when spring comes
and the dogs are settling under the porch 
and the larger animals are asleep in the barn
and in the distance there’s a little town 
with its single stoplight and one drug store and barber shop

so now your readers have all that information
but you just gave them the one image
the little boy listening to a baseball game in his bedroom
see how smart you are
and you did it without trying to be

humor helps when you’re writing poetry
speaking of his mid-life swerve into farming
E. B. White said once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back
good one E. B.

but don’t try to be sexy
somebody like Frank Sinatra or Michel Foucault
said everything in the world is about sex except sex
sex is about power
just write the good poem
the sexy part will take care of itself
the same way the smart part did            
                
anyway all a wedding breakfast is
is a start
oh just start
everything else will take care of itself 

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David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement of London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense” and was named one of Booklist’s Top 10 Black History Non-Fiction Books of 2010. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them.