>Date:         Thu, 11 Jul 1996 15:01:30 -0400
>From: Charles Smith (CharSSmith@AOL.COM)
>Subject:      Ken Irby

     I'd like thank Ron for the detailed & sympathetic analysis of Irby's
poem, which points the way toward the richness of sound patterns embedded
there.  The music in Ken's poetry has always struck me as
extraordinary--carefully constructed & 'scored' on the page, insistent in its
certainties.  Ron pointed to Ken's use & development of Olson's caesura,
noting that Irby's lines are seldom breath based.  Irby's musicality derives
just as much from things he learned from Duncan, & even more I think, from
Bunting & Zukofsky.  (When I mention Bunting, I'm thinking specifically of
the use of consonants Peter Quartermain demonstrates in his piece on Whitman,
Pound, Bunting.)  But Zukofsky still seems to be the richest source Ken has
developed (maybe because Zukofsky has such rich musical resources to offer?).

     From the sequence "Etudes", also from the book _Call Steps_:


call snow draw        cold moon sawm

comb new leaver lean

so shadows dough


or take a look at "{requiem etudes 7 for Louis Zukofsky}" which closes
"Etudes."  I'd also recommend to anyone who didn't see it, his review (it's
really more than that) of Michelle Leggott's _Reading Zukofsky's 80 Flowers_
that appeared in Sulfur a few years ago (& curiously has been his only
appearance in that magazine i believe, although he was a frequent contributor
to Caterpillar).

     The reasons for the neglect of Ken's work seem complicated & have always
confused me.  Part of it rests on his shoulders; he doesn't seek much
attention for himself.  But _Call Steps_ received a remarkably quiet
reception; the only notices I'm aware of are a short, impressionistic piece
by Ben Friedlander that appeared in _Notus_, & a longer take by Stephen Ellis
in _Poetics Briefs_. (If anyone is aware of others, I'd appreciate hearing
about them.)  His work was excluded from both the Hoover & Weinberger
anthologies; thankfully there is a good selection in the Messerli (including
the sequence "Heredom" Ron was writing about).

     To subsume Irby's work as "carrying forward the Olsonian project" as Ron
did is to pigeonhole it & to give short shrift to its scope.  I can't help
but think Ken was one of the casualties of the late 70's/early 80's poetry
wars; his work had some things in common w/ the emerging Language poetry & he
himself read it with interest, but never fell in step w/ the 'movement.'
  Poems appeared in an early issue of Barry Watten's magazine, This, & Lyn
Hejinian published _Archipelago_ in the Tuumba series.  But as the lines
became more fiercely drawn, people like Irby & Ron Johnson started to fade
from sight in that milieu.  I'm really not in a position to know how much
that had to do with Ken & how much had to with the literary politics of that
time & am curious how others view this.

     We are left now with _Call Steps_ as the most recent , readily available
book which collects work only through 1979!!!!!  That leaves over 15 years of
writing out of circulation.  As Paul Naylor noted, Lee Chapman has been
publishing recent work in _First Intensity_.  Some poems also appeared in
_:that_ a few years ago.  A chapbook of 11 poems was letterpress printed at
Naropa in 1994, _Antiphonal And Fall To Fall_ in an edition of 200 & has
never been distributed.  If anyone is interested, I have the address & phone
number (as of last fall) of Patrick Tillery who printed it, and Ken himself
may still have some copies.  BTW, although the Tansy _Catalpa_ is long gone
(& a candidate for a Sun & Moon classic?), John Moritz of Tansy was closing
the press & advertising copies of the 2nd edition of _To Max Douglas_ a year
or two ago, so they may still be around somewhere.

     There are many writers today who consider Irby one of the important (&
most neglected!) poets of his generation.  His engagement with the long line
is one of the more interesting & unique today.  Where are the critics &
publishers?

I'll close this with a poem from _Antiphonal And Fall To Fall_:

Would you take the diaphany of ivory and of brightness to be behind the name,

     and power,
and carry into the portraying and then into the writing by the way the ear
     itches from the air
the elephant of interior grace and strength or the bear of insistent nub just
     by the style itself and not by any subject of depiction
an elegy of cradle song for the mother, and that for the nations and for
     history, and for the full orchestra
an extended fantasy in meditation for the father, solo, and of the touch
or would that be reversed, or would there be the elephant and bear of crossed

     arms to wonder at
hanging not in what is made but in its air, swinging