The poems in NOTES ABOVE WATER are concerned with the lives of suburbanites and their secret sufferings-alienation, boredom, infertility, and infidelity. Reoccurring family members are threaded through the book, particularly dysfunctional parents who seem oblivious to the pain they're inflicting on their kids. There's excruciating conflict between the narrator and June Spoon, an ice queen narcissist jealous of her children's relationships and marriages. And Dadio, who rarely spares the rod, uses his offspring to vent his frustrations as a high-powered attorney. The abusive past haunts the narrator as an adult, where he struggles with self-flagellation trying to make his marriage work. There's beach poetry set in Hawaii and the coastal city of Oceanside, California. The alienation theme continues on the sand and beachfront parking lots, where surfers molest underage girls in vans and beachgoers kill boredom with booze and music. In the end, after a long day of sun, west coasters return to their cars and trucks feeling as isolated and alone as when they first sunk their beach umbrellas into the sand. Dark humor abounds, such as the narrator trying to coax his sister out of isolation by insisting there's no reason why she can't maintain her reclusive lifestyle even while be hitched; he points out the bonus of catered meals whipped up by her chef of a husband. There's hope too in these poems-the narrator gets a crush on the girl with the green violin and fantasizes about living with this sexy fiddler in an Irish cottage overlooking the sea. Wright gives his poems plenty of space on the pages, allowing them room to breath. This creates a more intimate space between reader and poet, as if you're reading intimate notes scrawled in a journal. Lots of experimentation with form in this book, including pantoums, flash, prose poetry, couplets, and quatrains. A great read for the poet in us all.
About the Author: KIRBY WRIGHT was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Honolulu Weekly Nonfiction Award, the Jodi Stutz Memorial Prize in Poetry, the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Robert Browning Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel. BEFORE THE CITY, his first poetry collection, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA'I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha's Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic. His futuristic thriller THE END, MY FRIEND, and his second poetry collection THE WIDOW FROM LAKE BLED, were both released in 2013. His Hawaiian memoir is forthcoming in 2015.