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Babel
Babel features more of the rhetorical acrobatics that fueled Barbara Hamby's earlier work. These whirlwinds of words and sounds form vistas, images, and scenes that are at once unique and immediately recognizable.
In poems such as “Six, Sex, Say,” she displays a linguistic bravado that moves effortlessly through translations, cognates, and homonyms. This love of words permeates the poems, from the husband wooing his future wife “with a barrage of words so cunningly fluent, / so linguistically adroit” in “Flesh, Bone, and Red,” to the alphabetic sampler woven from memory and love in “Ode on My Mother's Handwriting.”
Hamby's poems drift across histories and continents, from early writing and culture in Mesopotamia through the motion-picture heaven that seems so much like Paris, to odes on such thoroughly American subjects as hardware stores, bubblegum, barbecue, and sharp-tongued cocktail waitresses giving mandatory pre-date quizzes to lawyers and “orangutans in the guise of men.” As Booklist noted in reviewing her previous collection, Hamby's poems “are tsunamis carrying you far out to sea and then back to shore giddy and glad to be alive.”
In poems such as “Six, Sex, Say,” she displays a linguistic bravado that moves effortlessly through translations, cognates, and homonyms. This love of words permeates the poems, from the husband wooing his future wife “with a barrage of words so cunningly fluent, / so linguistically adroit” in “Flesh, Bone, and Red,” to the alphabetic sampler woven from memory and love in “Ode on My Mother's Handwriting.”
Hamby's poems drift across histories and continents, from early writing and culture in Mesopotamia through the motion-picture heaven that seems so much like Paris, to odes on such thoroughly American subjects as hardware stores, bubblegum, barbecue, and sharp-tongued cocktail waitresses giving mandatory pre-date quizzes to lawyers and “orangutans in the guise of men.” As Booklist noted in reviewing her previous collection, Hamby's poems “are tsunamis carrying you far out to sea and then back to shore giddy and glad to be alive.”
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Barbara Hamby
17 books20 followersBarbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Hawai’i. She now lives in Tallahassee, Florida. She teaches creative writing in the English Department at Florida State University.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 25, 2010
I love Barbara Hamby's poetry. It's all about language. She writes jubilation and rapture. The mockingbird overlooks the 1st section of Babel, called "The Mockingbird Blues." Appropriate, in terms of language and that the mockingbird itself is here a kind of trickster animating the poems. But bees are frequently mentioned, too, and Hamby's language buzzes with them. These poems are busy with words carrying energy from line to line and from one part of the poem to another. The reader himself becomes heavy with the hosannas of Hamby's language, honey-laden. The 2d section is called "13 Ways of Looking at Paris," an allusion to Wallace Stevens, perhaps, and a continuation of the 1st section's bird theme. Writing about Paris allows Hamby to sprinkle the French language in her poems, adding to the sheer fun of reading her. C'est fait a peindre. The final section of Babel is called "American Odes." in which she writes about the commonplace in our lives, a la Pablo Neruda. The difference is that Neruda gives us the short-line, minimalist poem while Hamby is a verbal machine gun spraying words and images and ideas at us. Addressing such things as bubblegum, hardware stores and her 1977 Toyota, her long lines are filled with frenzy, fireworks, snapcracklepop. She throws our culture onto the page so that it looks like drip painting. Yet, like them, there's absolute control because there's method. What seems like abandon is more about a layering to present an easily identifiable reality. Words run into words and lines into lines, torrents and tributaries forming the crystal liquid of language. What she does is uncanny, and beautiful.
June 3, 2017
FUCK YEAH! This is some strong, masculine, American poetry right here. It's effusive as a beatnik without sacrificing everything to alter of rhythm alone. If you're a word thief, you'll defiantly get some booty from this trove (not that I'm a word thief, but, that I have engaged in the practice) Updike famously said on every Nabokov paperback that "Nab writes prose the only way one should, ecstatically" Hamby's poems are so energetic they could charge batteries (who knows, maybe the future will have us fuel our cars on vibrant poetry). And they're funny. Between Hamby and Kirby, I'm thinking poetry might be a Southern thing. OH, and if you like poems about Steve McQueen, then, one of these poems is going to be very satisfying. for you.
Here's a line from the last poem, "and he's listening to her as she waves her hand in circles like a doomed helicopter, saved from a last minute crash landing on the table." That right there is better than most things I'll see today.
Here's a line from the last poem, "and he's listening to her as she waves her hand in circles like a doomed helicopter, saved from a last minute crash landing on the table." That right there is better than most things I'll see today.
June 21, 2017
best example of allusion porn
April 13, 2019
I personally prefer poetry that's a little bit more precise -- meandering to form a metaphor or to create imagery or a scenario can be evocative if given a purpose but this anthology felt like meandering for the sake of meandering. A few too many references for my liking.
January 6, 2025
The book expands like the richest day of your life. Delectable, voluptuous, luscious - all of it. My reservations only come from the three concerning references to fascism. Otherwise, this is the winding staircase you've been waiting to descend.
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April 27, 2026Entertaining wordplay! It took me a minute to adjust to her style and figure out what was going on with these poems, but by and large, a pleasure. I will look for other work by this poet.
May 6, 2012
Re-read this while at the State Forensics meet.
Barbara Hamby launches her poetry with a very rhythmic, slam sort of line where syncopation, alliteration mix with a general stream of consciousness. Add to this a few multi-lingual puns (check the action on Six Sex Say and stir in generous mixtures of pop and high cultural references. Underneath, however beats the heart of the formalist. He love of the surreal and juxtaposed settings often produces some startling effects.
She groups her poems in three sets.
I. The MockingBird Blues
At work is the figure of the Mockingbird as a trickster, and implicitly the figure of the poet herself. The opening poem ("My Translation") begins
I am translating the world into mockingbird, into blue jay
into cat-bombing avian obbligato, because I want
more noise, more bells, mores senseless tintinnabulation,
more crow, thunder, squawk more bird song....
and then finishes (I am ) translating the world into the body's bright lie.
These poems tend to be the most surrealistic of the bunch.
II. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Paris
An allusion to Wallace Stevens, each poem has its Parisian theme. Best known poem of the bunch is "Ode to American English":
I was thinking of English one day, American, really,
with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything
from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu....
III. American Odes
These are the most direct in tone. Several delights await the reader, including "Ode To Hardware Stores" with its ending lament for landscape covered by sprawl, and especially touching "Ode on Satan's Power"that begins with singing drunken Christmas carols and ends with a consideration of how we protect young life.
In short, a fine collection of poems for anyone in love with words (and the more, the better).
Barbara Hamby launches her poetry with a very rhythmic, slam sort of line where syncopation, alliteration mix with a general stream of consciousness. Add to this a few multi-lingual puns (check the action on Six Sex Say and stir in generous mixtures of pop and high cultural references. Underneath, however beats the heart of the formalist. He love of the surreal and juxtaposed settings often produces some startling effects.
She groups her poems in three sets.
I. The MockingBird Blues
At work is the figure of the Mockingbird as a trickster, and implicitly the figure of the poet herself. The opening poem ("My Translation") begins
I am translating the world into mockingbird, into blue jay
into cat-bombing avian obbligato, because I want
more noise, more bells, mores senseless tintinnabulation,
more crow, thunder, squawk more bird song....
and then finishes (I am ) translating the world into the body's bright lie.
These poems tend to be the most surrealistic of the bunch.
II. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Paris
An allusion to Wallace Stevens, each poem has its Parisian theme. Best known poem of the bunch is "Ode to American English":
I was thinking of English one day, American, really,
with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything
from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu....
III. American Odes
These are the most direct in tone. Several delights await the reader, including "Ode To Hardware Stores" with its ending lament for landscape covered by sprawl, and especially touching "Ode on Satan's Power"that begins with singing drunken Christmas carols and ends with a consideration of how we protect young life.
In short, a fine collection of poems for anyone in love with words (and the more, the better).
August 20, 2010
I never know exactly what to say when I read a book of poetry like this one.
It is obvious from the outset that it took such a talent and such a complete command of language (and not only the English language...) to create this tome. I have absolutely nothing but respect for the clever use of language throughout.
But, for the most part, it just didn't "do it" for me. It just wasn't my kind of poetry, I suppose. (and I give a huge exception to Ode On Satan's Power - wow. That poem alone took it from 2 to 3 stars...)
It is obvious from the outset that it took such a talent and such a complete command of language (and not only the English language...) to create this tome. I have absolutely nothing but respect for the clever use of language throughout.
But, for the most part, it just didn't "do it" for me. It just wasn't my kind of poetry, I suppose. (and I give a huge exception to Ode On Satan's Power - wow. That poem alone took it from 2 to 3 stars...)
October 30, 2015
I don't often relax and enjoy a full anthology of poetry at one time, and Babel proved to me that I should break this habit more frequently. I found myself drawn in from the first exquisite poem, titled My Translations. (Other favorites include Cinerama, Ode to the Potato, Ode to Hardware Stores, and Ode to Barbecue. This last one is currently vying for the position of my favorite poem ever.) Hamby's work is a tribute to the English language and a treat for the human psyche. This is certainly a volume not to be missed.
August 4, 2011
Some amusing and yet provacative verse, with an interesting weave of real-world observations and metaphoric tangents, classical mythology and modern realities. With some of the poems I enjoyed the literal imagery portrayed, while having a sense that I could find as much symbolic meaning as I desired. I learned of this collection when a the poem "Vex Me" was featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac on 03/07/2005.
May 25, 2023
Babel is a volcanic eruption of fire-spangled language. Delicious rhythms with such fine-tuning and turning, and a voluminous vocabulary, make this book a dizzying delight, as in the following excerpt from Hamby's poem "Ode on My Sharp Tongue":
and that unhappy girl rises up from my throat,
enamored of Keats, Rimbaud, his drunken boat,
shouting poems at the sky, drunk on words,
in a sea of men drinking what she serves.
June 4, 2022
Another of Hamby's books--featuring such classics as "Ode to my 1976 Toyota Corolla" and "Ode to my Mother's Handwriting." This book also contains various poems set in Paris.
April 19, 2012
magical poet. musical and magical.
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September 26, 2014Barbara Hamby (B.A. '78, M.A. '81)
January 19, 2017
Another imagery feast of abecedarian verse and rollicking rhythms. These polyglot odes and poems beg to be read aloud and savored.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews