The Invention of the Kirby Poem.

The Death of Fred Snodgrass

 
   San Francisco, 
   April 6, 1974. 
   It says here 
   in the Chronicle: 
   "Fred Snodgrass, 
   who muffed 
   an easy fly ball 
   that helped 
   to cost 
   The New York Giants 
   the 1912 
   World Series, 
   died yesterday 
   at age 86." 
   Fuck you, 
   Fred Snodgrass. 
   Some things 
   we never forget. 

THIS LITTLE GEM IS FROM David Kirby's 1983 collection Sarah Bernhardt's Leg. Though 50 percent found poem, "The Death of Fred Snodgrass" is the distinctive "Kirby poem" in miniature: casual, seemingly occasional beginning; specific character(s) other than the author; specific dates and places (then and now); a free-verse line that pulls us along as we gather information; agile syntax, impeccable timing, and complex tone. The poem is characteristic, too, in its mixed dictions. A colloquial, conversational voice ("It says here," "Some things/ we never forget") reads a well-made newspaper sentence full of baseball language and responds with apt slang--in this case, an obscenity. Is the speaker reading aloud? The last four lines certainly sound like it, but the first two mimic the dateline of a short news item: "San Francisco,/ April 6, 1974." So it's a kind of report. But a report on what?

"The Death of Fred Snodgrass" implies a speaker with a well-developed sense of irony. It has about it a delicious whiff of malice, but the malice is not, as it first seems, aimed at Old Man Snodgrass. Nor is the target the anonymous rewrite guy at the Chronicle who (perhaps unconsciously) betrayed a malicious streak of his own, though that possibility transforms Snodgrass from culprit into victim. "Fuck you,/ Fred Snodgrass," and we laugh, but in sympathy. "Some things/ we never forget": we're all implicated, we've all "muffed an easy" something, and we ought to--but don't--forget. So the poem is a report on Homo sapiens, and it's the product of notable intelligence, even wisdom, though it masquerades as a Bronx cheer.

My Twentieth Century, published by Orchises Press in 1999, is Kirby's twentieth book. Besides his five collections of poetry, he has published works of literary criticism, an "interdisciplinary glossary of contemporary American thought," a study of boyishness in American culture, a poetry-writing text, and two children's books.