Betty Boop's Bebop
by Barbara Hamby
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.
Current Writing Prompt
"Betty Boop's Bebop" by Barbara Hamby (from All-Night Lingo Tango) is one of about a dozen poems of hers that I heard over the years of listening to The Writer's Almanac program. She imagines the cartoon character Betty Boop telling us how she is not who we think she is. She has read Rilke! This Betty reminds me of Jessica Rabbit (from the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) who sexily cooed "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."
Our September call for Submissions is a simple one. Tell us the so far untold story of a cartoon character. It's a character we know pretty well on the screen or on paper, but we never got the full story. We never heard from the character in a way that was not controlled by writers and artists.
Barbara Hamby was born in New Orleans and raised in Honolulu. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Yale Review, and The New York Times.
She is the author of seven poetry collections including Holoholo (2021), Bird Odyssey (2018), On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), and Babel (2004). Her second book, The Alphabet of Desire (1999) won the New York University Press Prize for Poetry. Her first book, Delirium (1995), won the Vassar Miller Prize, The Kate Tufts Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award.
Barbara edited an anthology of poems, Seriously Funny (Georgia, 2009), with her husband David Kirby.
She teaches at Florida State University where she is a Distinguished University Scholar.
"Betty Boop's Bebop" is from her collection All-Night Lingo Tango (2009, University of Pittsburgh Press) Her website is barbarahamby.com
The deadline for submissions for the next issue is September 30, 2024.
Please refer to our submission guidelines and look at our archive of 25 years of prompts and poems. Follow our blog about the prompts and poetry.
