Poems In Place: AE Chats With Athens Poet Darrell Kinsey

by Len Neighbors
04/18/2008

Darrel Kinsey surprised me. I don't know many poets. In fact, I know precisely two, and while I did not have a firm mental image of who Darrell Kinsey would be, I did suspect I would meet a man trying to cut a literary figure. I expected him to be interested in the process of writing poetry, about craft and struggle and training. Instead, I met a storyteller in the Southern tradition, interested in place and unashamed of an occasional embellishment. It happens that poetry worked best for the things he wanted to express.

Although he grew up in Commerce, Kinsey is an Athenian. He graduated from the University of Georgia and lives and works downtown. Much of the poetry in his new book, Torsino, is about Athens, or things that happened in Athens, and anyone who lives here can immediately tell that the city is nearby.

This sense of place is one of the strengths of Torsino. Each poem is somewhere, and there are landmarks to follow, ranging from smells to colors to a specific bar. "Each place has its own spirit, I guess. I spent a lot of time in Panama City.... out on the fishing piers with a lot of the locals," he said, beginning a story. "Out on the end of the piers, where the best spots are, it can get sorta territorial, sorta rough out there. Guys with their shirts off, leathery skin, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths all the time." He is currently working on a book of vignettes called No No No No No about post-Katrina New Orleans, which he recently visited.

A Good Lunch Break

Go ahead and do the rap
about the flowers
in the little plot of bed
outside the office building.
Rhyme about pink.
I can read the newspaper ink
growing in on the trunks of the trees.
It says little films on little screens,
Little Kings in a little while/
The fastest trees grow claymation-style,
and the color of cover art is fuzzy on the twigs,
the texture of packaging material,
and the limbs form like your pelvic bones.
Remembering them on medical film,
still turns me on,
blue and gray XXX-ray.
Rap with the high hat.
Rap about the office buildings
in a lowland bend of the bypass.

In fact, much of Torsino is the result of travel. He wrote the bulk of the poems while falling in love, which for Kinsey involved a lot of driving.

"I met a girl in March and then we got married in October, so the poems came during that year and a little bit into the next year. I was traveling," he told me. "She lived down in Plains at the time, so I was commuting there for all my entertainment. Out on those country roads, with all those plant smells and dirt smells."

Her name is Anna, but Darrell calls her Loudelle, because that's what she wants her grandchildren to call her. "So I just went ahead and started calling her that," he said. "We met writing to each other.... She wrote a message to me and said, 'Here's a crazy idea... let's do a joint story,' and that's the first time we communicated. So for a month we did this joint story, which turned out to be about our supposed relationship. So we started writing to each other about how we would be, I guess, and it was pretty much like that once we actually met."

Darrell Kinsey is a poet that does not like to read his own writing aloud. At first, I thought he was just shy, but after some thinking I've realized he's just without pretense. He writes irreverent pieces for the Flagpole. His book, in fact, is named for a misreading of the brand name of his shoes. About to honeymoon in New York and Paris, he bought some brightly colored Adidas, which he thought were called Torsinos. Turns out, the shoes are actually called Torsions, but Torsino had already inhabited the poetry. The poetry itself, as he puts it, "is not purposefully mysterious." In fact, it is a pleasure to read.

The formal book release party is April 19 at Little Kings in downtown Athens. The book will be available for purchase, and his parents are performing, mom on autoharp and dad singing and playing piano. I have it on good authority that they will play Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea," and that this is not to be missed. If you don't get the chance to buy the book at the release party, you can find it downtown at Barnett's. at Borders or Barnes and Noble, or online at Amazon.

His aversion to reading the poems aloud is unfortunate because he has that sleepy Southern accent that Hollywood just can't seem to get right. His voice is quiet, but meant to tell stories, no matter how abbreviated they might be. If you show up on April 19 and ask him nicely, he just might surprise you with one or two.

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