"He is a spieling genius of the compound sentence and laugh-aloud funny."--Booklist

"Kirby's place among an attentive poetry audience is permanent."--Library Journal

"I've spent a few days carrying Winter Dance Party with me and man, it is a gorgeous cathedral of a book, but instead of rosaries and reliquaries and mummified saints, there is a great gathering of the unwashed, with the perfectly coiffed and perfumed worshippers among them, with catfish sizzling in an iron skillet over an open fire and a band playing soul and blues and rock and roll on instruments that change shape as they are licked and fingered. Hail Marys are last chances here, with dice made of bones skittering against a brick wall in the alley and a wide, lonesome brown river crawling south, filled with the detritus of broken hopes. On the shore, this book takes off its shirt and lands belly first in the mud, padding slowly toward the holy water, singing itself clean."--Keith Flynn, editor of The Asheville Review