Kirby Doyle

Kirby Doyle. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Kirby Doyle (November 27, 1932 - April 5, 2003) was an American poet and novelist, part of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 20th century.

Life

Doyle was born Stanton Boyle in San Francisco, California.

A United States Army veteran, Doyle was pursuing art and culinary studies at San Francisco State University when he published several poems in the school's literary magazine. This led to his association with Robert Duncan, Lew Welch, and Kenneth Rexroth.

His work appeared alongside that of Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg in the Spring, 1958 issue of Chicago Review, which was devoted to "San Francisco Renaissance" writers.

He lived for long stretches of time on communes near Mount Tamalpais. Poet Michael McClure said of him: "He was a handsome, big-smiled Irish American rascal. He was an original Beat, loose-jointed, with a great laugh. His poetry was beautiful stuff."

Several of his poems were published on broadsheets by the Communication Company, the publishing arm of The Diggers. He was a mainstay of the North Beach literary scene in San Francisco from the late 1970s until his incarceration in Laguna Honda hospital for dementia and the effects of diabetes.

Writing

Doyle stressed the directness of the spoken word over formal poetry. But while his work maintained the directness of colloquial speech, it could also be lyrical and rhapsodic. Doyle's poems were sometimes humorous. He was a Romantic at heart. He adored the works of John Keats, Emily Dickinson; and the great 'projective verse' of Charles Olson.

In the late 1950s, Doyle wrote Sapphobones, a collection of playful and evocative love poems, which cemented his literary reputation (Words like mad exotic birds fluttering / from my thorax / whipping my speech -- moist and gaudy feathers / gone from my lips upward...).

from "Poem To A Mountain Girl"

...and in your sleep I awake here,

have eaten an orange

have gone to the creek and bathed

listening to its thin and liquid speech

its joy to run so free and clean

Now, returning to this ragged tent

sanctuary to your sleep, your real sleep,

I wish for you waking

so that we together could take cool pause

at the hidden pond I found down stream

our bodies quick and chilled

by the water,

our bodies breathing - holding

Now, as pen point and shadow

touch this page

I look up almost stunned to

know that from your sleep you have loved me.

and from my awakening I have loved you back

Publications

Poetry

• Sapphobones (Poets Press, 1966)
• Ode to John Garfield (Communication Company, 1967)
• Angel Faint (Communication Company, 1968; Deep Forest,1991)
• Collected Poems (Greenlight Press,1983)
• After Olson (Deep Forest,1984)
• The Questlock: Gymnopaean of A. Dianaei O'Tamal (Deep Forest,1987)
• Lyric Poems (City Lights, 1988)
• Crime, Justice & Tragedy and Das Erde Profundus (Deep Forest,1989)
• Pre American Ode (unpublished)

Novels

• Happiness Bastard. Essex House, 1968. (Happiness Bastard, like Kerouac's On the Road, was produced on a continuous scroll of paper run through a typewriter, and the sole typescript is in the Kirby Doyle Archive in the possession of Tisa Walden which also includes the unpublished Opus "Pre American Ode", and other handwritten papers.)
• White Flesh (unpublished)

Audio/video

• Howls, Raps & Roars: Recordings from the San Francisco poetry renaissance (compilation) (Universal Music Group, 1963; Fantasy Records 1993).

See also

• San Francisco Renaissance poets
• List of U.S. poets

References

• Phillips, Rod. Forest Beatniks and Urban Thoreaus. Peter Lang Publishing (2000).

External links

Poems

• The Birth of Digger Batman, a prose poem Doyle wrote on the occasion of the birth of Billy "Batman" Jahrmarkt, the son of Billy Batman, a member of the Diggers
• Ode to John Garfield, a Doyle poem published by the Diggers

Books

• Kirby Doyle at Amazon.com
• Works by or about Kirby Doyle in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

About

• Friday memorial for Kirby Doyle -- Beat writer, poet, an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle
• Kirby Doyle and the Snows of Yesteryear, remembrances of Doyle by Michael McClure in the magazine Cento.
• Remembrances of Kirby Doyle by McClure, Peter Coyote,Tisa Walden, Philomene Long and John Thomas, and Claude Hayward.
• Kirby Doyle (1932-2003), remembrance of Doyle by Jack Foley
• "Of all the poets included in the watershed..." reflections on the poetry of Doyle (August 2006) by Ron Silliman
• Photo of Doyle (on right) with Billy Batman