Saturday, July 4, 2009

Barbara Hamby's monkey brain

Proving that monkeys and poetry are often intertwined, I just started reading Barbara Hamby's book Babel tonight and the second poem in the collection, "The Mockingbird on the Buddha," contains the lines: "he's my enemy, / my Einstein, my ever-loving monkey boy, every monkey thought / I blame on him."

You can read the whole poem at the Superstition Review.

Incidentally, I also read American Widow by Alissa Torres tonight and it featured a panel in which Torres refers to her husband-to-be as "monkey boy," then six pages later there's this line from Pablo Neruda: "You will remember that leaping stream / Where sweet aromas rose and trembled."

The Neruda poem exists online, but I can't vouch for its translation or authenticity having never read the poem before.

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