A Review of Jamaal May’s HUM (Alice James Books, 2013)

Read my review of Jamaal May’s Hum over at 32 Poems.

Excerpt:

The repeated image of the needle invites the reader to investigate how such objects, and the places and people they represent, become patterns that bind together that which frays. This collection asks: What can be salvaged from a city or a person that has been punctured, dragged, forgotten? A needle can mend a wound or open a vein. A needle can also translate the grooves of a record into song; needles can bring “light through drawn blinds” and “wind through a window’s failing”; “old factories needle / into the sky” (“The Hum of Zug Island”).