Kirby Doyle in City Lights basement during publication
Beat era poet and writer whose lyrical, evocative verses
Kirby, 70, passed on April 5 at Laguna Honda Hospital in
He was a handsome, big-smiled Irish American rascal, his
He was an original Beat, loose- jointed, with a great
In the 1950s he was a culinary school student and an art major at
Words like mad exotic birds fluttering/from my thorax/
In the 1960s and 1970s, Kirby abandoned writing for long periods,
by Allen Cohen
Great surprising event especially Kirby's daughter, Kelley,
I spoke of his interactions of his days with me at the Oracle
...and in your sleep I awake here,
Now, as pen point and shadow
party and reading in 1980 for Allen Cohen's book The Reagan Poems.
and brutal, bleakly humorous prose made him a mainstay
of the North Beach literary scene.
San Francisco after a long illness.
longtime friend and fellow poet Michael McClure recalled.
laugh.
His poetry was beautiful stuff.
San Francisco State University when he began dashing off poetry for
the college literary magazine and several small reviews.
In the late 1950s, he wrote a highly acclaimed set of
36 brief love poems published under the title:
whipping my speech -- moist and gaudy feathers/
gone from my lips upward -- he wrote.
living alone on Mount Tamalpais and battling drug and alcohol addictions
In later years, Kirby worked on an epic poem titled Pre American Ode
and a novella titled White Flesh.
Empty Mirror Kirby Doyle Tribute
The (A)wake
speaking of her view of Kirby as both icon and psychotic -
Michael McClure about Kirby's pad in 57 near Batman Gallery,
everyone grabbed onto a different part of the elephant and
so we saw Kirby in all his facets.
and read from an article he wrote for the Oracle - In prose he
wrote like he talked so it was very direct and he ended his article
with a short very direct uncluttered chinese style poem;
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
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
© Kirby Doyle