Babel

by Hamby, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780822958598
• ISBN10: 0822958597
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-15
• Publisher: Univ of Pittsburgh Pr

Summary

Winner of the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry Barbara 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.

Author Biography

Barbara Hamby teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.

Table of Contents

The Mockingbird Blues
My Translation	3	(2)
The Mockingbird on the Buddha	5	(1)
The History of Apples, Part One	6	(2)
Idolatry	8	(2)
O Deceitful Tongue	10	(1)
The Mockingbird Counts to Ten	11	(2)
The Mockingbird Falls in Love	13	(1)
Run	14	(2)
Vex Me	16	(1)
The Mockingbird Invents Writing	17	(2)
Fang	19	(1)
Thus Spake the Mockingbird	20	(3)
13 Ways of Looking at Paris
Babel	23	(2)
Cinerama	25	(2)
Ode to the Potato	27	(1)
Left Bank Freudian Striptease	28	(2)
Calling the Friends of Friends	30	(4)
Six, Sex, Say	34	(2)
Flesh, Bone, and Red	36	(2)
Shh	38	(2)
13th Arrondissement Blues	40	(2)
Attention, Citizen Sade	42	(2)
Ode to American English	44	(2)
Brain Radio Harangue	46	(2)
The Tawdry Masks of Women	48	(5)
American Odes
Ode to Hardware Stores	53	(2)
Ode to Barbecue	55	(2)
Ode on Satan's Power	57	(3)
Ode on My Waist	60	(1)
Ode on My Sharp Tongue	61	(3)
Ode to W. E. Diemer, the Inventor of Bubblegum	64	(3)
Ode to Rock `n' Roll	67	(2)
Ode to My 1977 Toyota	69	(1)
Ode on My Mother's Handwriting	70	(2)
Ode to the Bride of Frankenstein	72	(5)
Notes	77	(1)
Acknowledgments	78