Vox Populi
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Barbara Hamby: Ode on My Wasted Youth
Is there anything so ridiculous as being twenty
and carrying around a copy of Being and Nothingness,
so boys will think you have a fine mind
when really your brain is a whirling miasma,
a rat’s nest erected by Jehovah, Rousseau, Dante,
George Eliot, and Bozo the Clown?
I might as well have been in costume and on stage,
I was so silly, but with no appreciation
of my predicament, like a dim-bulb ingenue
with a fluffy wig being bamboozled by a cad
whose insincerity oozes from every orifice,
but she thinks he’s spiritual, only I was playing
both roles, hoodwinking myself with ideas
that couldn’t and wouldn’t do me much good, buying berets,
dreaming of Paris and utter degradation,
like Anais Nin under Henry Miller or vice versa.
Other people were getting married and buying cars,
but not me, and I wasn’t even looking for Truth,
just some kind of minor grip on the whole enchilada,
and I could see why so many went for eastern cults,
because of all religions Hinduism is the only one
that seems to recognize the universal mess
and attack it with a set of ideas even wackier
than said cosmos, and I think of all
my mistaken notions, like believing “firmament”
meant “earth” and then finding out it meant “sky,”
which is not firm at all, though come to find out the substance
under our feet is rather lacking in solidity as well.
Oh, words, my very dear friends,
whether in single perfection–mordant, mellifluous,
multilingual–or crammed together
in a gold-foil-wrapped chocolate valentine
like Middlemarch, how could I have survived without you,
the bread, the meat, the absolute confection,
like the oracles at Delphi drinking their mad honey,
opening my box of darkness with your tiny, insistent flame.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Barbara Hamby is the author of many collections of poetry. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.
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O, the earnest sincerity of our younger selves is so very sweet. I carried around Heidegger.
This poem, like many of yours, capture something dear in time and lets us laugh gently at our childlikeness.
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I’d forgotten this marvelous thing. So happy to re-encounter it. I had to chuckle at your toting BEING AND NOTHINGNESS around, though my own affectation was more severe. I carried Nabokov’s PALE FIRE wherever I went, not so much, as I told my gullible listeners (mostly the teenie girls I hoped would be impressed), for the sake of the novel, which I dismissed as “second rate.” No, I cherished the fabulous poet John Shade, who was cited throughout the book. He, I opined, was among the nation’s most accomplished and moving contemporary poets, unaware as I was that he was Nabokov’s own creation, not an actual person. Ah well: I hope it’s forgivable to have been young, pretentious….and stupid. You and David– keep ’em coming!
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hahahaha!
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I too love seeing Barbara Hamby’s name on a post, because her poems are full of words’ energy and fly here and there on the wings of puns and sounds, and make my heart and my ears lift. Iif I were a small dog, my tail would wag wildly. Thank you, Barbara, and Michael!
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Tail wag. Yes.
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What more can I say than I just love this poem (and MIddlemarch too). Barbara, thanks for writing it; Michael, thanks for posting it.
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Great gobs of Barbara Hamby’s poems. Always room for another in the firmament within my head. They add their chutzpah to the dark corners.
Oh, Barbara, in my 20 year old days I carried around a copy of Plato’s Republic, till someone told me he didn’t want poets in his Republic.
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Big grin! Barbara is singing my song. “[…] buying berets, / dreaming of Paris and utter degradation, / like Anaïs Nin under Henry Miller or vice versa.” And I stuck my feet in the water, and words were my friends, ‘Middlemarch’ my alarm bell.
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hahahaha!
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Oh, WOW…Yes! “Words. Dear friends . . . the bread, the meat, the absolute confection….” This poem is just wonderful. I knew this girl in high school before she knew words. She drove me crazy for three years. I think I’ll write her a letter and enclose a copy of this poem. I hope she will write me back. I want to know!
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Well I’m smiling now in spite of my “ do I hafta, get up” feeling a moment before. Love her poems. Love how much I identify.
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She does wake us up, doesn’t she?
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When I saw Barbara’s name in the subject line of my email I thought “Oh good!” and clicked “open” right away. It’s always a treat to start the day with one of Barbara’s poems — there’s a joie de vivre, even in the most serious moment of her work. Those mordant, mellifluous,
multilingual lines of hers! Yay to you, Barbara!
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She is the most musical of contemporary poets, isn’t she?
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I agree, I agree!
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Barbara Hamby never disappoints! She makes me laugh, think, cry and reflect. Firmament, indeed.
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Barbara is great, isn’t she?
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Thanks, Beth!
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Oh, this is marvelous: just the right amount of nostalgia and humor. What a wonderful poem to ponder in this strange time!
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yes, nostalgia and humor. I never recognized that balance before in Barbara’s poems. Thank you, Mandy.
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