This is an anthology of irreverence and humor in the hands of our best poets. Can serious poetry be funny? Chaucer and Shakespeare would say yes, and so do the authors of these 187 poems that address timeless concerns but that also include comic elements. Beginning with the Beats and the New York School and continuing with both marquee-name poets and newcomers, ""Seriously Funny"" ranges from poems that are capsized by their own tomfoolery to those that glow with quiet wit to ones in which a laugh erupts in the midst of terrible darkness. Most of the selections were made in the editors' battered compact car, otherwise known as the Seriously Funny Mobile Unit. During the two years in which Barbara Hamby and David Kirby made their choices, they'd set out with a couple of boxes of books in the back seat, and whoever wasn't driving read to the other. When they found that a poem made both of them think but laugh as well, they earmarked it. Readers will find a true generosity in these poems, an eagerness to share ideas and emotions and also to entertain. The singer Ali Farka Toure said that honey is never good when it's only in one mouth, and the editors of ""Seriously Funny"" hope its readers find much to share with others.

'Intelligently arranged and mixed with anecdotal tales to make the book an enjoyable read there is something in it for all readers with a fascination for these two "boundless, timeless and eternal" seas.' - Scandinavica

This eagerly-awaited sequel shares the characteristics of its distinguished predecessor -- wide geographical and chronological span; expert mingling of political, social and economic history; and Dr Kirby's ability to keep the separate national threads of his account from tangling as he weaves them into the broad regional picture that is his main concern. Here he tackles the contrasting experiences of Europe's northern periphery -- affluence and democracy in the north, stagnation and authoritarianism in the south -- from the French Revolution to the collapse of the USSR and beyond. This is a masterly study of a region that is far from peripheral politically to the post-Soviet world.

A brilliant new biography of the extraordinary, outrageous performer who helped open the floodgates of Rock'n'Roll

In June, 2007, Little Richard's 1955 Specialty Records single, "Tutti Frutti," topped Mojo "magazine's list of "100 Records That Changed the World." But back in the early 1950s, nobody gave Little Richard a second glance. It was a time in America where the black and white worlds had co-existed separately for nearly two centuries. After "Tutti Frutti," Little Richard began garnering fans from both sides of the civil rights divide. He brought black and white youngsters together on the dance floor and even helped to transform race relations.

Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll "begins by grounding the reader in the fertile soil from which Little Richard's music sprang. In Macon, Georgia, David Kirby interviews relatives and local characters, who knew Little Richard way back when, citing church and family as his true inspiration. His antics began as early as grade school, performing for his classmates every time the teacher would leave the room, connecting to an age-old American show biz tradition of charade and flummery. On the road, Little Richard faced competition from his peers, honing his stage show and making it, too, an act that could not be counterfeited.

Kirby sees Little Richard as a foxy warrior, fighting with skill and cunning to take his place among the greats. In the words of Keith Richards (on hearing "Tutti Frutti" for the first time), "it was as though the world changed suddenly from monochrome to Technicolor." Those sentiments have consistently been echoed by the music-listening world, and the time is ripe for a reassessment of Little Richard's genius and legacy.

This is the first in a sequence of books which explores the history of The Baltic World and Northern Europe. In this period, Sweden was a major European power, occupying a central position in international politics. Her rise and decline, and the passing of regional hegemony to the new powers of Russia and Prussia, are central features in the book. Dr Kirby describes the evolving social and political systems of the principal Baltic states of the time, he gives the key events and processes in European history a new interest and freshness by showing them from the unfamiliar perspective of the northern world.

Exploring the themes of the human relationship with the marine environment and the ways in which the peoples of Northern Europe have experienced and exploited their seas, this book reveals how human perception of the northern seas has changed over time.
Drawing on a wide variety of sources, from Denmark and Britain to Norway, Finland and Germany, The Baltic and the North Seas is an insightful and colourful history of the politics, economy and culture of this intriguing region.

Few countries in Europe have undergone such rapid social, political and economic changes as Finland has during the last fifty years. David Kirby here sets out the fascinating history of this northern country, for centuries on the east-west divide of Europe, a country not blessed by nature, most of whose inhabitants still earned a living from farming fifty years ago, but which today is one of the most prosperous members of the European Union. He shows how this small country was able not only to survive in peace and war but also to preserve and develop its own highly distinctive identity, neither Scandinavian nor Eastern European. He traces the evolution of the idea of a Finnish national state, from the long centuries as part of the Swedish realm, through self-government within the Russian Empire, and into the stormy and tragic birth of the independent state in the twentieth century.

In comical and complex poems, David Kirby examines our extraordinarily human condition through the lens of our ordinary daily lives. These keenly observant poems range from the streets of India, Russia, Turkey, and Port Arthur, Texas, to the imaginations of fellow poets Keats and Rilke, and to ruminations on the mundane side of life via the imperfect sandwich. Whether remembering girls' singing groups of the 1950s or recounting a child asking his priest if his dog would go to heaven, Kirby has the ability to make us laugh, but he can also bring us to tears through our laughter.

Few countries in Europe have undergone such rapid social, political and economic changes as Finland has during the last fifty years. David Kirby here sets out the fascinating history of this northern country, for centuries on the east-west divide of Europe, a country not blessed by nature, most of whose inhabitants still earned a living from farming fifty years ago, but which today is one of the most prosperous members of the European Union. He shows how this small country was able not only to survive in peace and war but also to preserve and develop its own highly distinctive identity, neither Scandinavian nor Eastern European. He traces the evolution of the idea of a Finnish national state, from the long centuries as part of the Swedish realm, through self-government within the Russian Empire, and into the stormy and tragic birth of the independent state in the twentieth century.

In the autumn of 1942, British Special Operations Executive agent Ronald Sydney Seth was parachuted into German occupied Estonia, supposedly to carry out acts of sabotage against the Nazis in a plan code-named Operation Blunderhead. Uniquely, it was Seth and not the SOE who had engineered the mission, and he had no support network on the ground. It was a failure. Captured by Estonian militia, Seth was handed over to the Germans for interrogation, imprisoned and sentenced to death, but managed to evade execution by convincing his captors that he could be an asset. What happened between Seth's capture and his return to England in the dying days of the war reads, at times, like a novel - inhabiting a Gestapo safe house, acting as a stool pigeon, entrusted with a mission sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler - yet much of it is true, albeit highly embellished by Seth, who was quite capable of weaving the most elaborate fantasies. He was an unlikely hero, whose survival owed more to his ability to spin a tale than to any daring qualities. Operation Blunderhead is a compelling and original account of an extraordinary episode of the Second World War - a brilliant blend of fact and fiction, contrasting material taken from SOE and MI5 files with Seth's own fantastical story.

More Than This, like David Kirby's previous acclaimed collections, is shot through with the roadhouse fervor of early rock 'n' roll. Yet these rollicking poems also contain an oceanic feeling more akin to the great symphonies of Europe than the two-minute singles of Little Richard and other rock pioneers, as Kirby seeks to startle, to please, to unwind the knots that we get ourselves into and make it possible to being anew. Little goes unnoticed in these poems: death is present, along with love, friendship, food, religious ardor and philosophical skepticism, nights on the town and quiet evenings at home. With More Than This, his twelfth collection, Kirby takes readers back in time and out in space, offering quiet wisdom and a sense of the endless possibilities that art and life give us all.

More Than This, like David Kirby's previous acclaimed collections, is shot through with the roadhouse fervor of early rock 'n' roll. Yet these rollicking poems also contain an oceanic feeling more akin to the great symphonies of Europe than the two-minute singles of Little Richard and other rock pioneers, as Kirby seeks to startle, to please, to unwind the knots that we get ourselves into and make it possible to being anew. Little goes unnoticed in these poems: death is present, along with love, friendship, food, religious ardor and philosophical skepticism, nights on the town and quiet evenings at home. With More Than This, his twelfth collection, Kirby takes readers back in time and out in space, offering quiet wisdom and a sense of the endless possibilities that art and life give us all.

Help Me, Information is propelled by the speed and motion of the poems that define earlier acclaimed books by David Kirby, poems that move the way the mind does on a good day, puddle-jumping from one topic to another and then coming in for a nice soft landing. Colloquial in tone, balancing narrative breadth with precise detail, Kirby's poetry displays his voracious curiosity about history, science, literature, and popular culture. Yet here he also reinvents himself with poems that recall the compactness of Jack Gilbert, the sweep of Allen Ginsberg, and the introspection of Frank O'Hara. Help Me, Information presents a fresh Kirby, familiar yet new.

Help Me, Information is propelled by the speed and motion of the poems that define earlier acclaimed books by David Kirby, poems that move the way the mind does on a good day, puddle-jumping from one topic to another and then coming in for a nice soft landing. Colloquial in tone, balancing narrative breadth with precise detail, Kirby's poetry displays his voracious curiosity about history, science, literature, and popular culture. Yet here he also reinvents himself with poems that recall the compactness of Jack Gilbert, the sweep of Allen Ginsberg, and the introspection of Frank O'Hara. Help Me, Information presents a fresh Kirby, familiar yet new.

Praise for David Kirby

"Kirby is exuberant, irrepressible, maniacal and remarkably entertaining.... Okay, let me just say it: he is a wonderful poet." -- Steve Kowit, San Diego Union-Tribune

"Kirby's voice and matter (teaching, literature, traveling, rock 'n' roll, everyday bozohood) are utterly personal and, despite all the laughter, ultimately moving." -- Ray Olson, Booklist

" Kirby] is a poet who peels away the layers of our skin to show us who we are: our weaknesses, our strengths, and our hilarious obsessions." -- Micah Zevin, New Pages

"The world that Kirby takes into his imagination and the one that arises from it merge to become a creation like no other, something like the world we inhabit but funnier and more full of wonder and terror." -- Philip Levine, Ploughshares

"These poems may be too cool for words." -- Carol Muske-Dukes, New York Times Book Review

Inspired by the carpenter's biscuit joint -- a seamless, undetectable fit between pieces of wood -- David Kirby's latest collection dramatizes the artistic mind as a hidden connection that links the mundane with the remarkable. Even in our most ordinary actions, Kirby shows, there lies a wealth of creative inspiration: "the poem that is written every day if we're there / to read it."

Well known for his garrulous and comic musings, Kirby follows a wandering yet calculated path. In "What's the Plan, Artists?" a girl's yawning in a picture gallery leads him to meditations on subjects as diverse as musical composition, the less-than-beautiful human figure, and "the simple pleasures / of living." The Biscuit Joint traverses seemingly random thoughts so methodically that the journey from beginning to end always proves satisfying and surprising.

Swine flu. Bird flu. Massive fish kills and filthy river systems. Recalls of spinach, lettuce, and other vegetables because of E-coli bacteria contamination. Eric Schlosser's classic "Fast Food Nation" revealed how our meat is bred, raised, and brought to market. Now, in "Animal Factory", bestselling journalist David Kirby takes the next step, exposing the devastating health and environmental impact of large-scale factory farms. In this thoroughly researched book, Kirby follows three American families and communities - one in North Carolina, one in Illinois, and one in Washington state - whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighbouring animal farms. These farms (known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs), confine thousands upon thousands of pigs, dairy cattle, and poultry in small spaces, and generate enormous volumes of faecal and biological waste as well as other pollution to the air, land, and water. Weaving complex science, politics, business, and the lives of everyday people, Kirby accompanies a fisherman who fights to preserve his family's life and home; watches as a Midwestern community pushes back against a local farmer with grand ambitions; and interviews an unlikely activist, who takes on a powerful alliance of corporate and political entities when her home is covered with toxic soot and her water supply is compromised by runoff from lagoons of animal waste.

Much of the public discussion about autism has missed the point about the possible causes. To solve this question, two writers began digging into the history of other degenerative neurological disorders. Their research led them to discover incredible and previously unacknowledged links between a strain of syphilis which left suffers raving mad, the spike in incidence of schizophrenia during the Industrial Revolution, and the hidden commonalities between the parents of the first children diagnosed with autism in the 1930s.
"""The Age of Autism" connects these dots to form a startling new thesis: behind each of these disorders - and many more - was exposure to mercury, the most toxic non-radioactive substance known to man.

The poems in The House on Boulevard St. were written within earshot of David Kirby's Old World masters, Shakespeare and Dante. From the former, Kirby takes the compositional method of organizing not only the whole book but also each separate section as a dream; from the latter, a three-part scheme that gives the book rough symmetry. Long-lined and often laugh-out-loud funny, Kirby's poems are ample steamer trunks into which the poet seems to be able to put just about anything, the heated restlessness of youth, the mixed blessings of self-imposed exile, the settled pleasures of home. As the poet Philip Levine says, ""The world that Kirby takes into his imagination and the one that arises from it merge to become a creation like no other, something like the world we inhabit but funnier and more full of wonder and terror. He has evolved a poetic vision that seems able to include anything, and when he lets it sweep him across the face of Europe and America, the results are astonishing.

In the 1990s, autism in American children began spiking, from 1-2 in 10,000 in 1987 to a shocking 1 in 166 today. In this period, two series of shots containing a mercury-based preservative called Thimerosal were added to the nation's already crowded vaccination schedule. Some parents noticed their healthy children suddenly descending into silent, disturbed, and physically ill autism soon after receiving vaccinations. They discovered that children were being exposed to mercury at very young ages - even before birth-at levels far exceeding federal regulations, yet their concerns were either ignored or dismissed by the FDA and the CDC. "Evidence Of Harm" explores both sides of this controversy, which has pitted families against the federal government, public health agencies, and some powerful doctors, researchers, and pharmaceutical giants. It reveals: The Story of Thimerosal: a mercury-based additive approved by the FDA in the 1930s and never subsequently tested; The "Mercury Mums" and their struggle to help their afflicted children; the invitation-only meeting at which FDA, CDC, medical, and pharmaceutical company officials discussed mercury, vaccines, and autism; and the mysterious rider to the Homeland security bill, originally drafted by Senator Bill Frist, which would provide extended liability protection to drug companies. This even-handed, important book examines both the personal stories of families and the unfolding political drama in the courts and halls of Congress.

In "What Is a Book?" David Kirby addresses the making and consuming of literature by redefining the four components of the act of reading: writer, reader, critic, and book. He discusses his students, his work, and his practice as a teacher, writer, critic, and reader, and positions his theories and opinions as products of "real" life as much as academic exercise. Among the ideas animating the book are Kirby's beliefs that "devotion is more important than dissection" and "practice is more important than theory."

Covering an impressive range of writers--from Emerson, Poe, and Melville to James Dickey, Charles Wright, Richard Howard, Susan Montez, and others--Kirby considers the evolution of critical theory from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth and explores the role of criticism in contemporary culture. Drawing from his experience writing poetry and reading to children at a local housing project, he answers two of his four central questions: "What is a reader?" and "What is a writer?" In the largest section of the book, "What Is a Critic?," Kirby demonstrates his passionate engagement with the function of the critic in literary culture and offers both overviews and close examinations of literary theory, book reviewing, and the historical background of criticism from its earliest beginnings. In the final section of the book, he addresses the question "What is a book?" with an examination of the reading preferences of older readers. Kirby's analysis of those responses, along with his own notions of the literary canon, is an insightful excursion into how books are valued.

Deeply learned and wonderfully entertaining, "What Is a Book?" is a lucid look at the whole of literary culture. Kirby makes us think about the books we love and why we love them.

The House of Blue Light is the second collection of autobiographical "memory poems" by Catholic-schoolboy-gone-bad-turned-poet-made-good David Kirby, a stand-up comic of verse if ever there was one: "in Stardust Memories ... these wise space aliens who visit Earth ... tell [Woody Allen] that if he really wants to serve humanity, / he should tell funnier jokes -- wait, that's my duty, / I think, that's my public duty! Because sooner or later, / we all turn upside down".

Wearing both heart and wit on his sleeve, Kirby confides in longish narrative poems events he actually or vicariously experienced -- as a child, a teen, a young man, and now -- as well as some future scenes he imagines. Literary theorists Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes; Little Richard and Muhammed Ali; Herman Melville, James Dickey, and Henry James; friends, family, personal heroes, and acquaintances, including the Ah Oui Girl of Paris and Tige Watley's Whoah of Baton Rouge, are all equally alive in Kirby's poems.

As Walt Whitman did, Kirby offers a first-person speaker as a proxy for everyone else ("Who, including ourselves, / knows what we know and when we know it?"), achieving a unity and accessible authenticity rare in poetry. A fun house, "a mishmash for sure", The House of Blue Light is a delightfully entertaining, irreverent, erudite collection of commentary piling upon commentary that brings us "that one element so largely absent / from our quotidian existence, i.e., surprise".

In 'The Peaceable Kingdom' of a David Kirby poem the framing of an identifiable voice and a strong, encompassing closure brings and blinds together the paradoxical, the funny, the sad, the messy, the precious in aesthetic concord. His pallete is brighter and braver for its inclusion of the often-scanted hues of statement, idea, vivacity of language and an interest in beings beyond the self. - from the foreword, by Mona Van Duyn.