Delirium

All-Night Lingo Tango

"As the poet has discovered for herself, NOTHING succeeds like excess. Her poems have taught me how to be happy while hysterical, or even just how to be hysterical without tears. Who else could ge me there so fast, so far, so fastidiously? Seriously, the All-Night Lingo Tango is the way out even before dark, and I cherish every disyllabic slur: baa baa, Barbar, have you any bull? Ther answer is yes sir, yes sir, nobody's fool." —Richard Howard

"Scant verbiage cannot rise to the occasion of these brilliantly overbrimming, beautifully bountiful, life-stuffed, word-smart, unconstrained but strangely formal, wise and wicked and zaftig lovelies. They turn ‘wretched excess’ to ‘blessed excess’ and declare a new physics of plenitude.” —Albert Goldbarth

“So much fascination with movies must reflect some dissatisfaction with real life; and such insistent exuberance must be resisting a dark undertow. Barbara Hamby knows that the Insomnia Inn is next door to the Hate Hotel, the ghouls are out, and death's a bear. But her poetry's torrential champagne forbids glumness as in this salubrious simile: Nightmares are never over; they roll around in your brain, like Jell-O / primed with exploding fruit.” —Mark Halliday

“With its hyper-intensity of imagery, humor, and substance sustained throughout, All-Night Lingo Tango is a whirling genius of a book.” —Susan Hahn

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