Current Issue: Spring/Summer 2011

God Loves You When You Shake That Thing 
David Kirby

                                     Little Richard tours constantly, and every flight
attendant knows who he is, so if I leave my book
                         on the Georgia Peach out on my tray table, they stop by

                                    with stories, usually having to do with his hair
and therefore accompanied by the high-hair gesture,
                         as in “His hair is like this,” which gives me

                                    the opportunity to say something like “Listen,
is there any food on this flight . . . umm, sushi!”
                         Would that work with anybody else, though?

                                    Like, would they assume I knew Hitler if I’d
written a book on him? I was six months old
                         when Hitler blew his brains out in that bunker

                                    under Berlin, and his aides all lit cigarettes
because he’d forbidden them to smoke while
                         he was alive, and since he wasn’t any more,

                                    well . . . party on, Germans! Every time I turn on
the little GE radio in my kitchen, in marches
                         your whole country, right out of those tiny

                                    little speakers. Everybody’s there: Bach,
Beethoven, and especially the Wagner whose
                         Tristan and Götterdämmerung brought

                                    such joy to Thomas Mann, whose Princeton
secretary described him listening and how
                         “his face, normally so controlled, gradually

                                    lets go and becomes soft, mild, full of pain
and joy.” How unhappy we are when our inner
                         divisions are divided, when we feel pain

                                    at some times and joy at others, and how delighted
when our ying and yang are united, our day
                         and night, male and female, Frank and Elvis.

                                    In his essay “Freud and Anna,” Mark Edmundson
recreates the daughter’s explanation of her father’s
                         work to the Nazis when they question her

                                    in Vienna in 1938, saying “My father . . . knows
you better than you know yourself,” how
                         “for years he has been writing about the hunger

                                    for . . . your half-monster, half-clown” who alone
knows how “to bring oneness to a psyche . . .
                         at odds with itself,” as though she

                                    somehow knew about the six year-old boy
who was dancing and singing for pennies
                         in Macon even as Nazi tanks rolled through Vienna.

                                    Little Richard is the anti-Hitler because
he gets people of all kinds out on the floor, jiving together.
                         Deutschland über alles, kids! Now get out there and boogie.

 

David Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll, which was hailed by the Times Literary Supplement of London as a "hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense. Kirby's latest book of poetry is Talking About Movies With Jesus, and he is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University. See also www.davidkirby.com.