David Kirby & Joni Tevis

DAVID KIRBY is the author, most recently, of MORE THAN THIS. Kirby, the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, along with several Pushcart Prizes and other honors. His numerous books include The Biscuit Joint; Get Up, Please; and The House on Boulevard St., a finalist for the National Book Award.

ABOUT MORE THAN THIS

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 are and life give us all.

***

Formerly a park ranger, factory worker, and seller of cemetary plots, JONI TEVIS is the author of two collections of essays: THE WORLD IS ON FIRE: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse, a Kirkus Best Book of 2015, and THE WET COLLECTION: A Field Guide to Iridescence and Memory.

ABOUT THE WORLD IS ON FIRE

The sermons of Joni Tevis’s youth filled her with dread, a sense “that an even worse story—one you hadn’t read yet—could likewise come true.” In this revelatory collection, she reckons with her childhood fears by exploring the uniquely American fascination with apocalypse. From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, her settings are often places of destruction and loss. And yet Tevis transforms these eerie destinations into sites of creation as well, uncovering powerful points of connection. Whether she’s relating her experience of motherhood or describing the timbre of Freddy Mercury’s voice in “Somebody to Love,” she relies on the same reverence for detail, the same sense of awe. And by anchoring her attention to the raw materials of our world––nails and beams, dirt and stone, bones and blood––she discovers grandeur in the seemingly mundane.

Possessed throughout with eclectic intelligence and extraordinary lyricism, these essays illuminate curiosities and momentous events with the same singular light.