See also the Data Structures Cookbook.

I'm going to have to wrap my head around ...

One way to go about that is to dump (see Data::Dumper; see also Data::Dump) the Perl object reference in stages, and from the inside out (i.e., top level to bottom):
    print Dumper $obj->{'items'};
will show that you have a reference to an array. Then
    print Dumper $obj->{'items'}->[1];
will show that one element of the array contains a hash reference. Finally,
    print Dumper ${ $obj->{'items'}->[1] }{'name'};
will show the value of one key of the referent.

Update: BTW: the expression
    ${ $obj->{'items'}->[1] }{'name'}
is equivalent to the more concise and IMHO preferable
    $obj->{'items'}[1]{'name'}