Delirium by Barbara Hamby

1994 Winner, Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry
Cynthia Macdonald, Judge

Barbara Hamby makes her poems out of jokes, Italian phrases, quotes from saints and philosophers, references to meals eaten and wines drunk.

In a fluid, compelling voice, she sets a stage, peoples it with real and imagined characters, spins them into dizzying motion, and then makes everything disappear as with a wave of a conjurer's wand, leaving the reader to wonder, "Did that happen, or did I dream it?"

One leaves her poetry the way one leaves a dark theater on a July afternoon, convinced that the ordinary passions really won't do—they need to be larger, as large as they are in these poems.

"Barbara Hamby is an extraordinary discovery! A poet of compassion and elegance, she is a poet whose debut in Delirium promises a rich (and enriching) lifelong project."—Cynthia Macdonald

BARBARA HAMBY was born in New Orleans and was raised in Hawaii. She is a poet, fiction writer, editor, and critic. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, and Negative Capability. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

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Severn Falls Asleep

Death crawls closer on nights like these, the chill creeps in and hangs on the walls like curtains. The fire dies, the candle is eaten by its weak fluttering flame. My eyes close. I have sat up so many nights with him

they fall together into one long stream of darkness that flows through my veins, rattles in my ears as his breath rattles in his chest, like a child's toy but darker and more slowly

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Delirium
+ ISBN 1-57441-003-2 paper $12.95s

LC 96-14748. 6x9. 103 pp.
Poetry.

Publication Date: November 1995.

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