Delirium

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 dothey need to be larger as large as they are in these poems.