Vox Populi
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Barbara Hamby: Ode to Anglo Saxon, Film Noir, and the Hundred Thousand Anxieties That Plague Me Like Demons in a Medieval Christian Allegory
Yo, Viking dudes, who knew your big-dog cock-of-the-walk
raping and pillaging would put us all here, right smack
dab in the middle of a decade filled with the stink
of war. Yes, sir, boys and girls, we’re eating an old sock
sandwich, but we’re speaking English, kind of a weird fluke
(a piece of luck, not the parasite), because the kick-
ass Angles were illiterate hicks while the sublime Greeks
had been writing poetry for a thousand years, heck,
history and philosophy, too, though they did shellack
the Trojans and a lot of other guys as well, stuck
them with their bronze age swords, testosterone run amok,
or so I’m thinking here from my present perch—a swank
appartement in Paris, swilling champagne, clothes black,
as if my past were a masterpiece by Jan van Eyck,
the soundtrack written by Johann Sebastian Bach
or his son, rather than the Three Stooges-Lawrence Welk
debacle that really occurred. My mind’s a train wreck
of two lingoes, twenty-six letters, and thousands of quick
images from movies, French—yes, but mostly aw-shucks-
ma’am Hollywood westerns or policiers in stark
black and white, and I’m the twist, tomato, skirt, the weak
sister who rats out her grifter boyfriend, palms a deck
of Luckys she puffs while scheming with the private dick
to pocket twenty large, or I’m the classy dame, sick
of her stinking rich life and her Ralph Bellamy schmuck
of a boyfriend. That’s when Bogart’s three-pack-a-day croak
(dialog by Raymond Chandler) sounds like music,
maybe John Coltrane, and you’re up the five-and-dime creek,
ma chere, because love can turn you into a mark, punk,
jingle-brained two-bit patsy who’d take a fast sawbuck
for snitching out her squeeze to the cops. Or you’re the crack
whore with an MBA standing on the corner in chic
Versace rags, falling for the D.A., till the Czech
drug lord plugs him. So who are you? Not the hippie chick
of your early twenties or the Sears-and-Roebuck
Christian judge your mother became, though Satan still stalks
you on a regular basis. Is that guy a slick
operator or what with his Brylcreemed hair and pock-
marked face? There’s still smallpox in Hell, so you push him back
whenever you can, grow orchids and for dinner cook
risotto alla Milanese, because knick, knack
paddy whack, you’re counting on something, not luck or rock
and roll, though you’ve been there—at the HIC with Mick
Jagger prancing around like a hopped-up jumping jack
on speed. No, ma petite Marcella Proust, this is the joke:
when your mother prays for you, your stuttering heart ticks
a little more like a Swiss-made watch, and when you speak,
does French come out? Nah, it’s the echo of those shock-jock
Vikings, hacking their way across Europe, red-haired, drunk
on blood and blondes, and though your husband looks like the Duke
of Cambridge, that’s not what you love so much, ya dumb cluck,
but his Henry James-Groucho Marx-Cajun shtick. Knock,
knock. Who’s there? It’s Moe, Larry, and Curly, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and publisher.
Copyright 2014 Barbara Hamby
Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. She is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (Pitt, 2021). She has also edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby. She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.
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And now that I just read another “ pick me up out of my depression “ Hamby poem, I just came back to this one and enjoyed it again for the first time because of that damn stroke. Giggles with Groundhog Day.
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Seriously funny is sitting on the couch where I always sit. So fun to pick it up and read at random.
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I dote on every poem Ms. Hamby produces, and each appearance on VP sends me back to her new and selected: a treasure if ever there was one. Keep your Jorie Graham and Anne Carson! I’m all in on Barb!
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Hahaha. Barbara is my fave too.
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“I’m the classy dame, sick
of her stinking rich life and her Ralph Bellamy schmuck
of a boyfriend. That’s when Bogart’s three-pack-a-day croak
(dialog by Raymond Chandler) sounds like music,
maybe John Coltrane, and you’re up the five-and-dime creek,
ma chere, because love can turn you into a mark, punk,
jingle-brained two-bit patsy who’d take a fast sawbuck
for snitching out her squeeze to the cops. ”
Oh chère Madame Barbara Hamby, thank you for this! You’re amazing & witty & smart & deep & full of ‘authenticity’ (to use the “word of the year”) & so delightfully & uncomparably brilliant!
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Thanks, Laure-Anne!
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Oh, that means so much coming from you. Sometimes I feel like a language machine, and if set up the gears and pistons exactly right, I might be able to get to the place I want to be. Such is the mystery of art.
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Punchy, physical, alive–just like the parts of our language we owe to those Anglo-Saxon marauders!
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“Punchy” — an apt adjective for Barbara’s style.
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What a great way to be knocked off my pity pot. The world was a big ache and now it’s giggling. Thank you!
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Hahahaha
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This is a scumptious poem. Yay! Still smiling.
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Yes, I love Barbara’s poems, so rich and satisfying to listen to.
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Try this one on, guys!
G
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Barbara is great, isn’t she?
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I love this rompin’ rant! So clever and funny. Along the way a tribute to the comic click of the “k.”
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Romping and roaring
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