Vox Populi
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David Kirby: Whatever Happened to Bobby Dunbar?
He disappeared at the age of four on August 23, 1912
when he was on a fishing trip with his family near
Opelousas and found eight months later in Mississippi
in the hands of one William Cantwell Walters
and reunited, as the newspapers said, with his happy family.
Well, some of the newspapers. One paper said
the boy shouted “Mother!” when he saw Lessie Dunbar
and the two embraced, while another reported
that the boy cried and quoted Lessie as saying
she wasn’t sure that he was her son. We love stories,
especially the ones that aren’t true. 26 people
were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre,
among them a first grader whose father was later
confronted by a man who said it was all a hoax,
that the shooting was invented by the anti-gun lobby.
William Cantwell Walters and a woman named
Julia Anderson insisted that the boy said to be
Bobby Dunbar was Anderson’s son, but Julia
Anderson couldn’t afford a lawyer, so the Dunbars
retained custody of the child, who lived out
the rest of his life as theirs. In 2004, a DNA test
established that the boy raised by the Dunbars
as Bobby had not been a blood relative at all.
When a reporter asked the Sandy Hook dad
how he’d replied to the man who insisted
that the grieving father was an actor and that
his son was alive somewhere, the dad said,
“That would be the answer to my prayers.”
Poet, critic, and scholar David Kirby grew up on a farm in southern Louisiana. Since 1969 he has taught at Florida State University, where he has received several teaching awards. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, poet Barbara Hamby. His many books include Help Me Information (LSU, 2021).
Poem copyright 2025 David Kirby. All rights reserved.
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I admire the way the speaker jumps from one related thing to another and gives the last words to the father. His words are the evidence, so to speak.
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Yes, the strategy of the poem is the poem, in a sense.
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Yes Sean & David & Michael — that exhausting anger and madness…
thank heavens and you and VP for poetry!
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Oh right on David! This is quite wonderful.
It works its way around the latent explosive of my deep anger, unfused by the florid history of the Dunbars, (damn its so easy to boil over these days! Sharon corrects me hourly…) And comes to rest so beautifully in the last dreamt word of the “Sandy Hook dad.”
Did nature itself not just launch a major protest of humankind and all manner of its foolishness in this world over the weekend? I’m ready to hand back the keys to the kingdom, or pray some way out of this mess. I’ll meet you at that beer place in town in the meanwhile. Pizza is on me.
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The world has gone mad.
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sorry, i meant to say wow and thank you to david and michael for these mournful, ever-flowing gifts
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wow
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