Born in New
Orleans and raised in Hawaii, Barbara
Hamby earned an MA at Florida State
University. She is the author of several poetry
collections, including Delirium which won the Vassar
Miller Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Poetry
Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award in 1995; Babel which won the Association
of Writers & Writing Programs’ Donald Hall Prize in 2004; and
All-Night Lingo Tango in 2009. Her short story collection, Lester
Higata’s 20th Century in 2010
won the Iowa Short Fiction
Prize/John Simmons Award. With her husband, poet and musician David
Kirby, she coedited the anthology Seriously
Funny in 2010. Hamby’s poetry has
been featured in numerous anthologies, including The
Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry in 2011); three editions of Best American Poetry 2010, 2009, and 2000; and Good Poems for Hard Times in 2006.
Hamby and Kirby have been called “the cultural power
couple” of Tallahassee, Florida
where they reside.
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Hamby has won fellowships from the Guggenheim
Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as several grants from the Florida
Arts Council. In 2010, she
was named a Distinguished
University Scholar at Florida
State University.
According to the Poetry
Foundation:
Hamby weaves together a mix of high and pop cultural references into
formally strict, lyrically extravagant poems. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly
described Hamby’s fourth collection, All-Night Lingo Tango, as “[c]hatty
and whimsical, literary and (at its best) laugh-out-loud funny,” and observed,
“Long-lined Odes, most in monorhyme or in loose couplets, give her extroverted,
digressive imagination free play.” In an interview with BOMBLOG, Hamby spoke to her interest in formal constraints: “When I was writing
my first book, I found myself being pleased when I was working under certain
formal constraints. Whether it was an anaphora that I had to repeat, the
abecedarian corset, or a sound I was repeating—I found that the constraint
forced me to dig deep into language and, more interestingly, into myself.”
Last month I considered making a Women’s History Month blog post about Betty
Boop who first appeared in Max Fleischer cartoons
released by Paramount
in March of 1930.
The black
and
white cutie pie made her bow in Dizzy
Dishes in his Talkartoons series and was soon starring
in her own shorts.
With her over-size head,
pouty bee stung lips, big round eyes, spit curl bobbed hair,
overtly sexual small body in a skimp dress threatening to
slip off her breasts and ending mid-thigh to expose glam dancer
legs, Betty Boop was an instant star.
Fleischer’s often surrealistic
cartoons were in stark contrast to their main competition—Walt
Disney’s early sound Silly Symphonies. The music was loud, modern,
and brassy. Fleischer originally conceived her as an anthropomorphic
French Poodle and was early studio star Bimbo’s—a dog—girlfriend. They co-starred together in Minnie the
Moocher with music by Cab Calloway. It was not the last time she was associated
with Black musicians which shocked Southern audiences. After the first handful of films, she was
fully human—supposedly a wild but innocent 16 year-old and was
paired with Koko the Clown from the Out of the Inkwell series.
Betty’s appearance,
little girl voice, and signature Boop Oop a Doop line were all
inspired by popular stage, recording, and early sound musical
star Helen Kane. In fact, the
connection was so obvious that Kane sued Fleischer. But Kane herself ripped off the look
and signature sound from Black Harlem jazz singer Esther Jones who often
performed as Baby Esther. Kane lost
her suit against Fleischer when that came to light. Jones is sometimes credited as being the real
and original Betty Boop.
When Betty first appeared
in the early ‘30’s her persona as a Jazz Age flapper was already outdated. Although she cheered Depression Era audiences,
fashions were quickly changing to longer mid-calf skirts and music was moving
into the Big Band Swing era.
Betty also drew the ire of Will Hayes, enforcer of
the Motion Picture Production Code in 1934. He found everything about Betty “suggestive
of immorality.” To comply with the
demands her skirts were lowered to knee and she was often shown with short
sleeves and a shop-girl peter pan collar. She was also changed to an adult woman,
sometimes given a human boyfriend/husband, and even portrayed as the mother
of a brood of children in at least one film.
By 1939 her films were discontinued,
although a daily newspaper comic strip continued for a few years. During World War II her image was
painted on bombers. Various
attempts to revive her came and went over the years. Her original cartoons were eventually
released for television but there was not much market for black and
whites shorts.
There was a revival of
interest in her as a result of the underground comix and hippie counterculture
of the late 1960s and ‘70s. Soon her
image was adorning posters, T-shirts, coffee mugs, figurines,
and an astonishing variety of merchandise. She remains a popular collectable to
this day. In fact, my oldest daughter Carolynne
had a large collection which decorated her apartment.
Here is Barbara Hamby’s
take on Betty from her collection All-Night Lingo Tango
Betty
Boop’s Bebop
Because I’m a cartoon airhead, people think it’s a
picnic
down on these mean streets. Sure, my skirt’s short,
but it’s a crime,
fellows, how you give a frail the slip, leave her
simmering,
hot and bothered. I have feelings, cardboard, but
bordering on ennui,
just this side of tristesse. I may not be human, but I
can kick
like one and bite and pinch, too. Don’t forget,
mister, I’m
not just a bimbo with a helium voice. I’m no rococo
parvenu pillhead. I’ve read your Rilke, your
Montesquieu.
Really, I’m not as dumb as I look. Or maybe I am. Less
tries to be more, but ends up being nothing. My last
beau
vetoed the philosophy of religion class in favor of
pre-law,
exactly why I don’t know, but I’m getting a glimmer.
Stay
zany, the cartoonists tell me, and next year you’ll
play Cinderella.
—Barbara Hamby
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