From the gut

This weekend The New York Times ran a story about a 76-year old man named Bobby Kirk who has become an overnight sensation based on his penchant for simple observations well put. The whole thing started with a local news interview in which Mr. Kirk suggested it was too hot to fish. (Actually, what he said was, “I never got a bite. I reckon it was too hot.”)

The Times speculates about the reason for all the attention. One reporter suggests: “He’s just a plain-spoken, average guy. I think it’s just time for the average guy’s opinion to come out.”

I have my own opinion: Bobby Kirk is no ‘average guy.’ He’s an extraordinary guy, a poet in the truest sense of the word, in a way that’s been lost to modern culture.

As it turns out, Kirk has only a 6^th grade education. This is a man who speaks not from book learning or with any regard for grammar, but from the gut and from personal experience. He uses words the way people once used words long ago before we corrupted them completely by shoehorning them into pretty, meaningless paragraphs designed to impress and inform, but not to communicate any particular truth. Yes – I am talking about 90% of the writing we consume nowadays in the form of news, literature, criticism, texts, advertising…maybe even this blog post.

Modern man has been stripped of his instinct by many, many cultural conveniences, the use of words is one of the most insidious. Most of the words we consume today speak to the intellect, but not to the senses. We respond to the proclamations and observations of a man like Bobby Kirk because we can actually feel his words. The choice of words, the turns of phrase, they originate in direct experience and therefore they are closer to the source. They hold more truth, possibility…and even joy…than the words we read in a typical issue of The New York Times.

Bobby Kirk calls it like he sees it. This makes him a poet in the truest sense of the word: someone who translates life into words that can be experienced not just with the mind, but with the body. He speaks without the nullifying, numbing effects of grammar. He speaks from direct experience of living, which we respond to viscerally. It brings us joy because it serves not to distance, but connect us.