Kirby Doyle
Kirby Doyle (November 27, 1932 - April 14, 2003) was a poet in the New American Poetry movement, the so-called "third generation" of American modernist poets. He was also one of the San Francisco Renaissance poets who preceded the Beat poets and laid the groundwork for Beat poetry in San Francisco. His name is sometimes associated with Beat poetry. Doyle was also a novelist.
Doyle was born Stanton Doyle in San Francisco. An 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, the founders of the New American Poetry movement. These poets stressed the directness of the spoken word over formal poetry.
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...). 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. Several of his poems were published on broadsheets by the Communication Company, the publishing arm of the Diggers.
Although his work maintained the directness of colloquial speech, it could also be lyrical and rhapsodic. Doyle's poems were sometimes humorous.
Doyle suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction for much of his life. He was a mainstay of the North Beach literary scene in San Francisco, and lived for long stretches of time on communes near Mount Tamalpais. The 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."
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- Poem To A Mountain Girl
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- ...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
Contents
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List of works
- Sapphobones (Poets Press, 1966)
- Ode to John Garfield (Communication Company, 1967)
- Angel Faint (Communication Company, 1968; Deep Forest, 1991)
- Happiness Bastard (Essex House, 1968; a novel)
- The Collected Poems of Kirby Doyle (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)
- White Flesh (unpublished; novel)
Recordings
- Howls, Raps & Roars: Recordings from the San Francisco poetry renaissance (compilation) (Universal Music Group, 1963; Fantasy Records 1993). Click HERE to listen to Doyle read Angel Faint from this compilation (you must have Windows Media Player).
Further reading
- Phillips, Rod. Forest Beatniks and Urban Thoreaus. Peter Lang Publishing (2000).