KIRBY CONGDON: KEY WEST POET LAUREATE!

Kirby Congdon, Key West’s first Poet Laureate will be honored with a proclamation and champagne reception at The Studios of Key West on Sat. April 20^th at 6PM.

One of America’s most prolific poets, his published career spans more than sixty-five years, and includes more than 300 poems as well as scores of essays, plays, collages, and musical compositions.

Born in West Chester, PA. and raised in New England, he has been dividing his time between NYC and Key West for more than forty-five years.

Self-effacingly, he ascribes his place in the forefront of the arts as being due to the fact that he’s “the only one left.” As in much of his art and writing, there’s a wry wisdom and ironic sense of life’s fleeting quirks in this assessment.  Though possessed of a sparkling wit, he describes himself as “naturally introverted” – a poet who “lives on air,” even though his earlier portraits almost always depict him as a rakishly handsome leather-clad biker.

These seemingly contradictory aspects of his persona epitomize the modest all-encompassing world articulated in his work. Whether in verse or images, he is a natural collagist, re-imagining the world through a radical conjunction of seemingly unrelated places and things, combining an innate New England brevity with the flamboyant juxtapositions of an avowed surrealist. How appropriate for Key West!

It’s not surprising that he has never been easily categorized. Though anthologized as a member of the “mimeo revolution” of NYC’s “East Side Scene” in the 1960’s as well as in numerous gay publications, neither of these movements define nor engendered him. While his content may include the interaction and interdependence of timeless human yearnings with an anonymous post-industrial landscape, his tonality is almost Elizabethan. His is a “floating world” of questing re-freshened eyes in a suddenly transformed space – a living testimonial to Pound’s dictum to “make it new.” When asked to define poetry, W.C. Williams replied that “only the quality of the emotion endures.”  Kirby Congdon’s continual re-creation of his world is a testament to his endurance – endlessly curious, generously inclusive, and gloriously…ours!