Research Catalog

Title

The alphabet of desire / Barbara Hamby.

Author

Hamby, Barbara, 1952-

Publication

New York : New York University Press, [1999], ©1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 103 pages; 22 cm

Summary

In this book of poetry, Barbara Hamby races through the circuitous regions of heaven and hell, desire and love, trailing words ahead of and behind her, giving shape and significance to the strange and the familiar. Not limited to the self-referential, Hamby playfully references historic and literary personae, taking stabs at Shakespeare, Jane Austen, the Bible, and Casanova.

Contents

• The Word -- Millennium Rave -- Blood -- The Ex-Goddess Speaks -- The Hunter -- The Chicken-Wire Girls -- With Sonya -- Beriberi -- Mr. Pillow -- Paper -- Cut -- Hey, Udine! -- Thinking of Galileo -- The Dream of the Red Drink -- Achtung, My Princess, Good Night -- Beelzebub on the Prowl -- Cruelty -- Dad, Dave, Deluge, Death -- Elliot and I Discuss Eliot via Macbeth -- Footbinding as a Way of Life -- Gospel -- Hatred -- Irony Waltz -- Jane Austen Jambalaya -- Kamehameha Drive-in, 25 Years Later -- Laudanum for Everyone -- Midnight on the Piazza della Signoria -- Noli Me Tangere, Stupid -- Origami Ragtime -- Pas de Deux with Incubi -- Quel Scandale, Darling -- Reichsfuhrer Blues -- So Long, Roy -- Trigger Tries to Explain -- Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Leonardo -- Valentine for Martin Luther -- Woo -- X-Ray of Your Brain at 4 A.M. -- Yellow Fever -- Zugzwang Amore -- Ode on My Wasted Youth -- Ode to Italian Fruit -- Ode to Money -- Ode to Public Bathrooms --
• Ode to Insects -- Ode to Warts -- Ode to Teeth -- Ode to Untoward Dreams -- Ode to Black and White Movies -- Ode to Breath -- Ode to Castrati -- Ode on My Bitterness -- Ode to the Lost Luggage Warehouse at the Rome Airport.

ISBN

• 0814735975 (alk. paper)
• 0814735983 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

98058063

OCLC

ocm40408934

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries