David Kirby

Biography

David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. He is author or co-author of more than twenty books, most recently a collection of poetry, The Ha-Ha (LSU, 2003), and a volume of essays, What Is a Book? (Georgia, 2002). His work appears frequently in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and was recently awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.

See Work

ESSAYS / Fall 2006

An Army Of Chitterlings

By David Kirby

Then retrieved my book and kept reading, because finally I was understanding France. I had lived in Paris a number of times before: twelve months across 1977 and ’78, six months in 1998, the summer of 2001, perhaps as many as a dozen...

ESSAYS / Spring 2005

Give Me Life Coarse and Rank

By David Kirby

As the American poet, Whitman is scrutinized, taken apart, reassembled, and categorized more than any other. Yet often he ends up in the wrong pigeonhole. Some readers type him as an American original who sprang fully formed from the brow...

Winter 1988

The Sex Lives of the James Family

By David Kirby
Spring 1982

Jim Der Trapper and Other Heroes of the Old West

By David Kirby
Summer 1993

The New Candide Or What I Learned In the Theory Wars

By David Kirby
Autumn 1980

Who’s In Charge Here?

By David Kirby
Winter 1996

What Is A Writer?

By David Kirby
Spring 1979

Everything Is Real, But Some Things Are More Real Than Others

By David Kirby
Spring 1999

What is a Book?

By David Kirby
Winter 1985

Waiting for A Critic Who Does Not Exist

By David Kirby