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(More customer reviews)Not much needs to be said--yet so little has actually been said about the work of Kenneth Irby. With the release of this collection, a seriously overdue publication of the works of a brilliant mind is offered, an accumulation of wisdom and intense energy that has the capacity to make its readers not just better readers and writers, but better human beings as well. And it is, perhaps, even more resonant for those readers who live near the poet (he teaches at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas)--his portrayal and, what's more, his own very creation of the Midwestern landscape will no doubt appeal to the reader who shares in the way by which the land speaks to and questions those of us who also occupy this landscape. Yet, and this is one of many reasons why it is impossible to "categorize" Irby's work, the reader will also get a glimpse of language reflective of time spent in Copenhagen, the Beat-like scene in Berkley (a "scene" always in the midst of transformation), and influence from poets associated with the Black Mountain school. Most importantly, we are privy to the geography of the Mind, which develops over both space and time.
"Ever onward," he can be heard to say to someone walking the halls on the KU campus--and that is exactly the kind of notion that becomes highlighted by this intense body of work: For both reader and (presumably) author, consciousness expands, and there is growth of some kind in the same way it might occur for the reader of Blake or A. Huxley, or the ancient tribesman who ingested psilocybin. It is another step in "evolution" (a loaded term, unfortunately) for those who open themselves up to it, for those who, in fact, do press "ever onward" with the "intent on" grasping what they can from such a masterful and candid shaper of language, image, and sound. Finally, for this reader at least, a sense of comfort calms me with each reading, thereby creating that open quality (recall someone like Olson here or one who practices Zen, etc.) that allows one in the first place to breathe in an expansion of consciousness, despite feelings of alienation and a kind of incomprehension that surrounds us all in the Existential crises we all must face, no matter how willingly or unwillingly. This happens in the same manner that it happens with Joyce or Kafka or Stein or Pound (Joyce's "epiphany" is as good an example as any)--the long journey through their works, while at times becomes for some readers quite frustrating in terms of reading comprehension, is almost always a mystical kind of experience that the reader later comes to truly appreciate far beyond what s/he originally thought possible. Irby's hyacinths, his varying perspectives and ways of approaching "the WORK" at hand, his musicality (one need not speak English or "understand" the language to nonetheless receive just as much pleasure in listening to the euphony of the words, I would contend), experiments with form, and just his plain experiement to see what constant experimentation might produce . . . all of these things restore to some extent my faith or belief in humanity and a world that is always being challenged by violence and cruelty, that seems in constant need of repair and, again, a continued expansion of Consciousness. So, instead of watching constant slow-motion replays of stabbings and shootings on Youtube or the nightly news, thumbing through a book such as this one--one that comes along only once in a great while--can really become a part of one's salvation, an affirmation of life itself, and it ultimately allows this reader to have some type of conversation w/ Irby (despite its difficulty at times, his work never seems exclusionary to me), even though his physical being, in purley physical terms, ponders something else, somewhere else. In the world of poetry and academics, the production of this text has been delayed far too long--it is a major contribution to contemporary American poetry, and, as I've argued here, it has much more to offer to many different audiences and thus should not be solely associated with stuffy professors and academic papers or reviews. Ultimately, it has most everything to do with our day-to-day lives and the expansion of our collective Consciousness.
This collection is a true American treasure and an amazing achievement.
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***Winner of Poetry Society of America's 2010 Shelley Memorial Award Kenneth Irby has practiced his craft at the center of the American poetry scene fordecades, yet is little known to the mainstream. An associate of the legendary BlackMountain poets as well as of the celebrated seventies L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group of literaryexperimenters, he was a close colleague of writers such as Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn,and Robert Creeley. This comprehensive collection marks the first time the full rangeof Irby's artistry has been presented in one place. Irby's early career, startingin the 1960s, paralleled the late Beat era and the counterculture, and his blendof innovative wordplay with personal and political themes made him an important voiceof that era. At the same time, he was able to forge his own path, conjuring a stylethat was both universal and distinctly American. Critics and other poets especiallyhave noted his avant-garde use of sound, silence, and unusual sentence structureto seduce readers. His surprising, incantatory style conjures the feel of jazz ina striking blend of heart and mind. As poet Robert Kelly has observed, "No one .. . has ever rooted down and plumbed the mystery of American places, land, name,history of our taking space, as Irby does. No one . . . has so clearly articulatedthe living fact, that America is an intelligent thing, and that . . . each humanbeing has a root awareness of the inadequacy of this place, and that is vision."
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