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.
"Malocchio" and Buonarroti
Consider the line in which the lovely "malocchio" occurs: "...junkyard Buonarroti, / funkadelic malocchio, voice shouting / from the radio, talking about love, about heartbreak,". Notice that a word like "junkyard" precedes the highly regarded "Buonarroti", and a word like "funkadelic" precedes "malocchio" (Italian for "evil eye").
Hence, the reader is too charmed by Hamby's bold mixology, too fascinated by her interbreeding of "junkyard" and "Buonarroti" to feel timid in the presence of this work. The last line of "Idolatry" sums up the effect quite well, as reading "Babel" is like getting, "A quick fix in the alley from the dark drug of words."
"Babel" is a book of poetry that exemplifies everything language can do and be, as through her words Hamby becomes all of poet, painter and musician, "...translating / the world into blue, azure, cerulean, because there is a sky / beneath us as there is a sea above. O the fish soar like dragonflies...the mockingbird / swims through the ocean like a man-of-war".
The Power and Powerlessness of Language
"Babel" "translates the world" through poetry and into art. It is a phantasmagorical vision accompanied by a percussion of carefully chosen syllables. But while Hamby is surely demonstrating the power and magnetism of language, she is also using her poems to point out its limitations.
The poem "Fang", for example, calls for something more than words to communicate the poet's inner experience. Hamby writes, "I need Fang for revenge...I want words / like teeth that could tear the flesh / from the throat of my worst enemy...".
Here, language is insatiable. The poet needs something beyond words, but has only words with which to discover it. The attempt is "Fang," a term that, by the poem's end, remains just out-of-reach: "O Fang...erupt from my tongue, give me a world I cannot give myself."
Chaos and Control
"Babel" showcases a world that is in a constant state of confusion and disorder, a "hodgepodge of rival factions / fighting over the borders of nothing." Within it the reader finds, "...Catholics, anarchists, gypsies, / Bosnians, Hutus, Titas intellectuals, Commies, punks, / murderers," all existing within the same line (from "The Mockingbird Counts to Ten"). But through her relentless entangling of images, languages and linguistic levels, Hamby creates a world of chaos that she so smartly controls. She throws words like fireballs, but they touch the reader like feathers.
Ana Hartman - Ana Hartman is an adjunct writing instructor and freelance writer living in Philadelphia. She earned her MA in English & Creative Writing ...
