Review: a review of barbara hamby's babel a book of poetry that explores what words can (and cannot) do

A Review of Barbara Hamby’s Babel

A Book Of Poetry That Explores What Words Can (And Cannot) Do

Ana Hartman

May 6, 2009

Barbara Hamby’s third book of poetry, “Babel”, observes the world as a highly disordered place that one can only begin to understand through artistic expression.

The title of Barbara Hamby’s award-winning book of poetry, “Babel”, is a biblical allusion to the tower built by Noah’s descendants in Babylon, who intended it to reach up to heaven. But God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one another. In its everyday use, the word denotes a confusion of words, voices and other sounds.

But the word “Babel” provides more than a referential definition to this work, as Hamby gives her readers a brouhaha of language that is like being in the audience of a modern-day rock concert. People are everywhere: screaming and dancing– making drunk-people noises.

Yet each individual in this loud, tie-died mania of a crowd hears not the chaos that is happening inches around them, but the fine chants and chimes, the consonance, rhythms, assonance, and inflections that source from the stage and find the listener– that source from this book of poetry and arrive sacredly inside the reader.

The Confusion of Language

Hamby’s poetry mixes language, and at many levels. The intermingling of core languages like German, French, and Italian is perhaps the most obvious example of this. Most poems contain at least one foreign reference whether it be a simple noun like the, “les pomme frittes” in “Ode to the Potato”, or a European artist or historical figure such as in the poem “Attention, Citizen Sade” which cites, “David’s Coronation of Napoleon.”

Contrary to what the mere English-speaking reader might assume, Hamby’s use of foreign tongue does not turn her poems into pretentious strands of impenetrable verse. Instead, words like the Italian “malocchio” from the poem “Idolatry”, work to stimulate an ever-building curiosity within the reader while also adding to the bounding rhythm each poem seems to possess.