David Kirby’s Help Me, Information is a book of poems that fits into the tradition of American lyricism and odes while also bringing a fresh, contemporary voice that makes the book difficult to put down. Carrying with it a vision of Walt Whitman’s famous long lines, the collection also makes use of frequent references to music, family, and global travels in order to take us on a journey with the speaker. Indeed, the power of music speaks to us from the very title, a reference to the lyrics of Chuck Berry, which are used as an epigraph. Help Me, Information then opens with the five-page “Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Ode,” an ode to the power of naming that ends with a call to “Let your name be such that each morning the devil says goddammit, she’s up.” This opening act paves the way for the rest of the collection, a prelude to four sections of travel and music that plant you squarely in the midst of every scenario, conversation, and recollection.
Section one’s poems take you on a long, conversational, rambling ride and then stop short with a punch that leaves you thinking – you need to stop and digest between these poems, to reflect on life, death, religion, music, and movies. They may start in one place and end in another – a discussion of foreign movies turning into a conversation with a waitress at a restaurant – but each one is connected in such a natural, authentic way that grounds you in the personal experience of the speaker, no matter how global in scope the subject may be, that the move from subject to subject feels earned and wholly enjoyed. Section two moves us away from the long-lined prosaic style into recollections of childhood that still feel like being told a story. Section three returns us to the long lines and the realm of music, giving us the life of Marie Antoinette interspersed with the lyrics of “Teenager in Love,” anaphora in praise of the self, and sex and the body interspersed with the meaning of poetry and food, including a great sex-as-food-as-cannibal poem. Our last two sections bring the collection’s denouement, giving us the personal in tandem with the global and abstract – how much we all love and look for miracles and have run-ins with the devil – and the power of words and wordplay. Concluding the book is a standalone poem, just like we began. Here, we discuss the “Waffle House Index,” a poem which mentions how “America was red in Whitman’s day when rivers ran with the blood of men and boys,” a call once again to our long-lined literary traditions.
Help Me, Information will do what “a great poem does and free you, turn you / into a god, take you off your feet and away from home, then lead you / back, and not just for the time it takes you to listen or read but forever” (“Hitchhike”). I highly recommend Help Me, Information to any reader who wants to use the realm of poetry to experience a conversation with an old friend, which David is to me. The tone of these poems is authentic and true, the voice genuine, the stories told in a way that only David Kirby could tell them.
Section one’s poems take you on a long, conversational, rambling ride and then stop short with a punch that leaves you thinking – you need to stop and digest between these poems, to reflect on life, death, religion, music, and movies. They may start in one place and end in another – a discussion of foreign movies turning into a conversation with a waitress at a restaurant – but each one is connected in such a natural, authentic way that grounds you in the personal experience of the speaker, no matter how global in scope the subject may be, that the move from subject to subject feels earned and wholly enjoyed. Section two moves us away from the long-lined prosaic style into recollections of childhood that still feel like being told a story. Section three returns us to the long lines and the realm of music, giving us the life of Marie Antoinette interspersed with the lyrics of “Teenager in Love,” anaphora in praise of the self, and sex and the body interspersed with the meaning of poetry and food, including a great sex-as-food-as-cannibal poem. Our last two sections bring the collection’s denouement, giving us the personal in tandem with the global and abstract – how much we all love and look for miracles and have run-ins with the devil – and the power of words and wordplay. Concluding the book is a standalone poem, just like we began. Here, we discuss the “Waffle House Index,” a poem which mentions how “America was red in Whitman’s day when rivers ran with the blood of men and boys,” a call once again to our long-lined literary traditions.
Help Me, Information will do what “a great poem does and free you, turn you / into a god, take you off your feet and away from home, then lead you / back, and not just for the time it takes you to listen or read but forever” (“Hitchhike”). I highly recommend Help Me, Information to any reader who wants to use the realm of poetry to experience a conversation with an old friend, which David is to me. The tone of these poems is authentic and true, the voice genuine, the stories told in a way that only David Kirby could tell them.
Title: Help Me, Information
Author: David Kirby
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: LSU Press
Copyright: 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0807175941
Author: David Kirby
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: LSU Press
Copyright: 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0807175941
