Bird Odyssey

by Barbara Hamby

Overview

Travel has always been Barbara Hamby's muse, and in Bird Odyssey she hits the road hard, riding a train across Siberia, taking a car trip from Memphis to New Orleans on Highway 61, and following The Odyssey from Troy to Ithaka. The concatenation of images released include Elvis and Tolstoy cruising through the sky in a pink Cadillac, Homer and Robert Johnson discussing their art in the Underworld, and the women in The Odyssey telling their side of the story, because what's a woman to do in this world of men? She has to strike out on her own, ask the right questions, and tell her own story, translating the world into her own bright lie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822983323
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	05/11/2018
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	80
File size:	985 KB

About the Author

Barbara Hamby has published seven books of poetry, most recently Bird Odyssey and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems. She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, and her book of linked stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the 2010 University of Iowa John Simmons Award and was published by the University of Iowa Press. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.

Table of Contents

Contents I. Six Blackbirds On The Highway To Moscow Ode to My Gulag The Dream of the Dacha Ode to Petersburg Lyovt Toshno Over-the-Hill Tenors after the Opera Ode to Lenin’s Overcoat Six Blackbirds on the Highway to Moscow The Brides of Ekaterinburg Letter to a Lost Friend Ode to Sirin, the Bird Goddess of the Siberian Milky Way Ode to Luck and All His Roosters and Dogs II. Three Vultures On The Blacktop To Memphis Discussing the Crucifixion with Jehovah’s Witnesses at the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald House in Montgomery, Alabama Three Vultures on the Blacktop to Memphis Fried Chicken Boiled Peanut Blues Ode to Reading Proust in Memphis Elvis and Tolstoy Save the World Driving in the Rain Past Itta Bena Near Quito Plantation I Be Dead Blues Jennie Hodgers Tells All Wanda Jackson at Tipitina’s, Saturday May 19, 2012 Riding Through the Ninth Ward with the Vice-President of Uganda New Orleans Dithyramb III. To A Chickadee At Troy Athena Ode Ode to a Chickadee at Troy A Farewell to Shopping The Lotus Eaters: Ode on My Pothead Nephews Ode to Roadside Shrines Full-Moon Polyphemus Blues Ode on My Vertigo, Wildflowers, and the Nature of Love Olympia Homer and Robert Johnson Talk about Gigs in the Underworld Ode on Words for Water I. Nausicaa II. Circe III. Mother in the Underworld IV. Sirens’ Song V. Calypso VI. Penelope’s Lament Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

"Hamby's poetry always takes us on a journey. . . . fun for all readers." —Library Journal
 

Past praise for Babel:
 
“One has only to read a few pages of Babel to feel in the presence of a poet with a unique, many-layered consciousness, and a few more pages to realize that her considerable verbal dexterity and mastery of tone are qualities she’s capable of sustaining. This is poetry that energizes, that dares to give us a high- wire performer’s notion of a good time.” —Stephen Dunn, final judge for the AWP/Donald Hall Prize for Poetry

Past praise for All-Night Lingo Tango:
 
“Reading Barbara Hamby is like savoring a fine multi-course meal. Her poems are thick and meaty, filled with savory details, but full of subtle nuances only realized on multiple reads. She fuses humor, pop culture, literature, travel, and romance in an ebullient mix that one can’t help devouring.” —Susie DeFord, Bomblog
 


Past praise for On the Street of Divine Love:

 “The divine love in this book is at heart the love of poetry itself, and to partake of these poems is to share a measure of the poet's devotion.” —George Bradley, The Yale Review

From the Publisher

05/15/2018
Extended riffs unwinding in one big propulsive surge, Hamby's poetry always takes us on a journey. So it's no surprise that her new work (after On the Street of Divine Love) jaunts across Siberia, motors through the South, and sails with Odysseus. The result is rich with cultural reference and contemporary insight, told in Hamby's typically sly, witty, colloquial language. Encountering "Six Blackbirds on the Highway to Moscow," she reflects, "I believe/ in the mystery of the universe, because as fast as one question/ is answered, another will unfold like crocuses." "Three Vultures on the Blacktop to Memphis" are "reminders to take it all in because I'm heading/ somewhere on this misbegotten stretch of road and going fast." The section "Chickadee at Troy" opens by addressing Athena, "O goddess of attitudes, yes, ma'am,/ …hear my prayer, because I'm adrift in a sea of words." VERDICT Fun for all readers.

Library Journal