1. Walking out
Kenneth Irby’s first pamphlet, The Roadrunner Poem, appeared as the fourth issue of the journal Duende in April 1964. Forty-five years later his Collected Poems (2009) appeared as a massive document of one poet’s engagement with the process of the poem and the poetics of its statement. More than a shadow falls between the early and the late appearances of Irby’s poetry. Like most collected poems, this volume defines a career in writing and, when set against the literary history of its time, punctuates its achievement by the influences it absorbs, the modes and fashions of contemporary poetry it either acknowledges or rejects; it registers a poetics of an articulate sensibility driven, or at least dedicated, to making language and poetic form define themselves. Publishing such a book is no simple matter. The book brings together into full public notice the poems the poet accepts. In asking for a fair reading it must acknowledge the risk of rejection, the intemperance of the literary world, while hoping for praise, understanding, and confirmation of the writing life of the poet.
