~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Book Review by Stephen Furlong

Hamby, Barbara Burn: Poems. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025. 76 pp. $20.00

Note: Before I begin, I wanted to express my sincere gratitude to Susan Swartwout and Victoria Olsen and the spirit of Dixon Hearne. Being able to spend time writing about books for Delta Poetry Review has been a true joy and I am grateful for the opportunity to do it again and again. Thank you.

            …There must be some way

out of here, because there is and there isn’t,

barbarbut whatever you do, don’t look back.

                                    from “Ode to the Radio”

Barbara Hamby has worked some magic in her most recent collection Burn; the collection is riddled and rhymed with odes that often had me dizzied with reflection and laughter. Of Hamby’s duality, Denise Duhamel writes in her blurb “[H]er wit and wisdom are the prizes we dig for in each of her poems as she helps us navigate the terrifying world of environmental devastation and dangerous political nonsense.” Simultaneously humorous and hard-hitting, Barbara Hamby has cultivated an engaging and memorable collection.

From the very beginning, Barbara Hamby pays her respect to the legends—epigraphs from Sappho, Horace, and even Endheduanna make an appearance as Hamby, in her own right, “carves her scheme for the universe.” Like her partner, the venerable David Kirby, Barbara Hamby writes long, flowy poems that fuse together humor and heartache—the braiding of which create poems like “Ode to All My Late-Night Great Ideas.” Hamby writes:

            . . .you know the ideas that maybe involve a road trip

                        to Miami or California and you wake up in a parking lot

            in Mississippi or Delray Beach with a dead French fry stuck

                        to the side of your face or you decide to drive over

            to your ex’s house at 3 am and give him what your mother

                        used to call “a piece of your mind”. . .

With line rhymes of maybe, Miami, and Mississippi alongside the echoing assonance in fry, side, drive, and mind, Hamby is able to weave a memorable beginning to an enduring poem. The lacking punctuation also aids in the fusion of humor and heartache too, as the section continues to unfold:

            you won’t remember that psychedelic trip into the night

                        or you’ll be able to retrieve the piece of your mind

            from the sidewalk where either he threw it or you fumbled

It’s a testament to Hamby’s poetic prowess that both of these moments exist simultaneously in the poem because they, too, exist simultaneously in life. Once again, assonance of night and mind, retrieve and piece push the narrative forward while also pulling in the reader into the world of words that Hamby is able to cultivate. Before the poem is done, Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, and even D.H. Lawrence all make cameo appearances—furthering the notion of Hamby’s deft ability to engage, tangle, and entwine memory’s map. The poem ends with some of my favorite lines from the collection, too, as Hamby writes:

                        so please, Mr. Postman, keep all my great ideas in cosmic envelopes

            and bring them to me whenever I need to be shoved out the door with no

                        idea where I’m going or how or where the hell I’ll end up

As only the second poem in the book, Barbara Hamby already had me hooked. There is the ethereal nature of the phrase “cosmic envelopes” but also the stark reminder of applying action to memory, words to experience, and her magic is spellbinding. Another poem which works together rhythm, rhyme, and a bit of magic is “Ode to My Burning,” where Hamby begins:

            You’re a campfire on the outskirts of Hell, the gas burner

                          on Satan’s stove, the rigamarole of tinder and hate

            bursting from TV screens. O sister, what fire rages

                          in your furnace of tripe and gizzards, blood and ire?

Right from the beginning with that campfire line, Barbara Hamby had me entranced—wondering internally (and audibly, too) “Where is this poem going?” I also have an affinity for poets and poems that utilize language that is atypical or not as commonplace—I mean, how many contemporary poems are tossing in rigamarole? Not many, but consider the word’s definition: “a procedure or explanation that is long, complicated, and tedious.” And yet, in one of the collection’s shortest poems, Hamby’s lines unfold in dramatic fashion:

                                                            . . .Oh yeah, you’re crisp

                        as a deep-fried corndog on the last day of the circus

            when the high flyers come down from the trapeze,

                        and the clowns take off their noses, bury them

            in a dump by the radioactive lake, while you sleep with the lions,

                        who have ditched their wigs to dream in caravans

            of squalor and storm. . . .

One detail I’d be remiss to bring to attention is the auditory experience of a Barbara Hamby poem. Yes, there is further line-based rhyme and movement which I alluded to earlier, but also the consonance of crisp, corndog, circus, come, and clowns alongside down, dump, ditched, and dream really makes this poem sing in a profound way. The poem ends in spectacular fashion; consider this:

                        because you’re burning on your cross again like Apollo

            for Daphne, his fingers touching her skin as it thickens and turns,

                        but you’re Daphne, too, as your arms become bark

            and the dark pith of sap rises in your womb, and you see

                        the earth for what it is—a river, a bell, a tomb.

What an ending! The classic Daphne and Apollo mythology ends this poem in stunning fashion.

Brief lesson: Apollo, Daphne, and Eros (also known as Cupid) all play center stage in this story. Apollo, in this story, is oft associated with ego and unchecked lust; Daphne is stunning and beautiful, but rejects men’s advances for all time; Eros, in a way, serves as the checker and balancer, but is also spurned into action because of his own hurt. Two arrows get shot—one causing passion and one deterring it. Then, after a pursuance, Daphne turns to a laurel tree. Not lost in future translators is the symbolism of wisdom and victory the laurel represents.

The mythology fuels this poem to new heights because the speaker is simultaneously pursuing what (and who) they love, but also recognizing their own “Daphne” attributes—to be untouchable and, pun intended, also rooted in that. The poem, alongside its mythology allusions, is layered and nuanced and proves to be a favorite of mine.

Sidebar: At the end of Burn, Barbara Hamby offers up an explanation for writing a collection of odes; she posits “[U]nlike the elegy that focuses on the end of lives, the ode celebrates and contemplates living, but, of course, that means keep an eye on the final curtain as well, so there’s an elegiac subtext in every ode.” It is through this awareness that, for myself as reader and writer and human, there’s an understanding, an agreement of sorts, ending exists alongside living and celebrating. How fitting then to have this collection right now!

The last poem I’d like to touch on is housed in the last section, and that is “Want Ode.” Take this snippet from the second stanza and a teeny sliver of the third:

            but I want to be those flies buzzing like a fire alarm at 3am,

                        my brain blazing and my body following like a hungry dog,

            walking through a city where I don’t speak the language,

                        every word a slap in the face or an invitation to a party

            in a deserted mansion where the dictator beheads the poet,

                        and his wife stabs him in his bath, eats blood oranges

            and weeps. . . .

Another wonderful example of Hamby’s utilization of the long, flowy line and another poem that doubles as masterclass auditory wielding. The tone of this poem is so rich in its humanness, too, to be among the living but also teetering and tottering over uncertainty and celebration. This, too, reminds me of “Ode to My Burning” in that sense and reveals how both co-exist. Rooted in ode’s legacy, Byron makes an appearance, so too does Beethoven. For example:

            I want to step into Beethoven’s filthy apartment with the pizza

                        boxes stacked on the floor and listen to him pound

            his piano into splinters. I want to be the splinters and the pain

                        in his gut that becomes the opening of the Fifth.

I love that splinters and pain line. It, too, is rooted in history’s lessons made modern; contemporary research reveals that in addition to going deaf, Beethoven also had significant gastrointestinal problems, among other ailments. While this section is a classic “pain into art” trope, there’s something more to it. Consider these lines, as we consider the speaker here as both intensely craving, but also self-aware.

            I want to be the immortal beloved, to smell your body

                        when I first knew you wanted me, that same yeasty pong

            that drove me mad with desire, because I want to stop time,

                        start time, make time, pass time, want to blow my past

            to smithereens and still remember everything in Technicolor detail,

                        so I’m asking when will this wanting stop. . .

You know what I want?

I want to thumbtack these words to telephone lines and hang it in art galleries.

I truly love these lines.

All told, Barbara Hamby’s Burn is full of that—lovely and powerful lines, stop-you-in-your-tracks lines. It’s a collection rooted in the historical legacy of ode but also one that pushes the boundaries of what an ode can be in this social, poetical, and political climate. It’s a collection for our time and of our time and truly deserves a place on your bookshelf.

Barbara Hambry's Poetry and Bio

Barbara Hambry's Interview