Hum

by Jamaal May

In May’s debut collection, poems buzz and purr like a well-oiled chassis. Grit, trial, and song thrum through tight syntax and deft prosody. From the resilient pulse of an abandoned machine to the sinuous lament of origami animals, here is the ever-changing hum that vibrates through us all, connecting one mind to the next.

Genres: Poetry, Adult, African American, Black Literature, School, Read For School, The United States Of America

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 2013

Reviews

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this.
It was so raw and emotional and everything I wanted in a poetry book.

I've never been the biggest poetry fan. A lot of times it takes someone sort of walking me through each reference, the extremely metaphorical writing, the significance of the form and structure of the poems, all of those things.
In the end, it's just never been ~my thing~.

However, I do love a lot of spoken word poetry.
And I was able to read this more like spoken word. And it deals with racism, abuse, loss, depression, addiction, and living.

I'm not sure what else I can say about this, but I highly recommend it to poetry lovers and poetry not-so-lovers.

I really wish my school hadn't canceled the English class that was covering this book (among others). I could have written so many great essays on this. Gah.

Here are some of my favorite poems from this to look up if you're curious:
- Chionophobia (Fear of Snow)
- How to Get Your Gun Safely Out of Your Mouth
- I Do Have a Seam
- Pomegranate Means Grenade


I really need to look into more of Jamaal May's works, and you should too. This is fantastic.


~~~
Gracious. I'll have more to say on this tomorrow. I'm going to let this sink in some more.
Wow. Absolutely amazing.

~~~
Me @ me: Hey, maybe don't keep picking up books. You've got two that you're already reading.

Me @ me: Ummm, no. Plus, this is a poetry book… so it's not as long!!

Me @ me: Fine.


Yeah, hi. I started reading this years ago for an English class that my high school yanked away right before the class was supposed to start. At the time I was a few poems in and really enjoying it. When I found out my school no longer was offering the class, my enthusiasm about it plummeted and I put it down.
Recently someone asked me for poetry recommendations and I found myself recommending this, solely on the fact that I had read a few of the poems and loved them. SO, guess who's starting it again!!!

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

May’s poetry explores Detroit’s post-industrial landscape with many of the poems focusing on the relationships between humans and machines. Humans hum. Machines hum. Electricity hums.

Glass above my bed trembles
at the touch of bass pouring thunder-thick
out of twelve-inch speakers and I almost don’t mind
being jolted awake because I know this song.
From A Detroit Hum Ending with Bones

May uses sestinas (the traditional Italian form in which lines end with particular words that repeat to explore themes of obsession or anxiety) for a couple of his more complex poem structures. Indeed, six other poems take their titles from phobias associated with the end-words of his sestina—machine, ignore, sea, snow, needle, and waiting. These images and themes recur throughout the book. His beautiful words speak to the anxieties about time and mortality that trouble us all. Recommend.

[Andrea Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit to being drawn to this collection because of the gorgeous cover and its steampunk robot with a birdcage head, which immediately sparked my imagination. The physical book itself is also beautiful, with a lovely typeset. A smattering of dark pages, each for a "phobia" poem (such as Athazagoraphobia: Fear of Being Ignored"), appear throughout the book, starting out black at first then lightening toward softer grays. It's an interesting way to highlight a set of associated poems and there's a subtle effect to reading words with white text on a dark page that suits the "phobia" poems. For example, reading "Athazagoraphobia: Fear of Being Ignored" on one of the rare black pages in the books creates an interesting contrast between text and the physical page.

Hum is dedicated to "to the inner lives of Detroiters." When I think of Detroit these days, I picture photo essays that show the city in seemingly apocalyptic states of decay. May's poems reflect this state of everyday apocalypse. "Still Life" presents a "Boy with roof shingles / duct taped to shins and forearms / threading barbed wire through pant loops" as well as other trash can armor in the face of what seems to be a wasteland. While in "The Girl Who Builds Rockets from Bricks," a girl wanders in "the caverns of deserted houses," performing "her excavation for spare parts: // shards of whiskey bottle, matches, / anthills erupting from concrete // seams, the discarded husk / of a beetle."

These poems thrum with rhythm, and sound plays a vital role, natural sounds mix with manufactured sounds mix with inner soul sounds. They are full of texture, bringing Detroit imagined and real into vibrant life.

"A humming bird draws
nectar in my thoughts, wings beating
80-something times per second
but there aren't many flowers here; it's been many
summers since I stopped even listening for bees."
— from "A Detroit Hum Ending with Bones"

"Neat" is a disorderly pantoum, in which the repeated lines are almost but not quite repeated. there is enough variation that the new lines slip by almost unnoticed as repetitions. It describes a bar scene and a man sitting alone, drinking. "No one is above being invisible / not even me, with my shirt tidily pressed, // another man who's seen the bottom of a tumbler." The feeling is despondent and mundane. The pantoum form works perfectly here, the almost-repetition of lines reflecting the slipshod redundancy of everyday life and looping thoughts and questions that never seem to lead anywhere.

"You are a quarter ghost on your mother's side.
Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box."
— from "How to Disapper Completely"

In "Macrophobia: Fear of Waiting," he writes, "I was fascinated / that every time I tried to type love, / I missed the o and hit the i instead. / I live you is a mistake I make so often. / I wonder if it's not / what I've really been meaning to say." I make the same mistake quite often, and I have found myself thinking the same thing (I am only a little jealous that he put it into a poem first). There are so many passages, phrases, poems I love in this book that I find it hard to know which ones to focus on.

"Is the sun a flash grenade? This heat
is so heavy the fruit stands buckle and ripple
like mirages, but your brother shivers"
— from "Chionophpbia: Fear of Snow"

This book is amazing (another I need to own) and is one of the best collections of poetry collections I've read this year.

For a more expanded look at this collect, there's a great interview with Jamaal May up at The Normal School .

You can also watch a video of May reading "I Do Have a Seam" from this collection.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

May is a phenomenal poet. This collection breathes Detroit, cement, metal, and soul. The focus on tangible details, (like a child thinking that a discarded hypodermic needle would make a good sword for his toy), draws the reader into his world. A world of struggle and survival, but not despair. This is poetry that would appeal to men and women. Perfect for a book club or high school. Would definitely recommend. "I don't get cars, but I get this: how difficult it is to get/a wreck off cinder blocks and why my dad once fiddled/daily with a dead Camaro, refusing to believe its silence."--a few lines from "On Metal".

[chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Become origami.
Fold yourself smaller
than ever before. Become less. More
in some ways but less
in the way a famine is less.
We will forgive you for not being
satisfied with fitting in our hands.
We will forgive you for dying to be
a bird diminutive enough
to fit in a mouth without being crushed.
-- "How to Disappear Completely"

Even the conch is a bit
of a blade, coiling itself around itself,
spiraling to a point, so that all we find
lovely in its folds forms
the outline of a dagger.
-- "Thalassophobia: Fear of the Sea"

You stand nameless in front of a tank against
those who would rather see you pull a pin
from a grenade than pull a pen
from your backpack.
-- "Pomegranate Means Grenade"

[Cass ☾ · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Read for school

May’s poem, “The Sky, Now Black with Birds” is about a reaction about the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. which was the result of a hate crime by three white supremacists. Hearing May read his poem, you could feel the intensity and anger through his tone, the room is silent, and you can tell he so desperately wants to forgive the men at fault but at the same time cannot see how that is possible. May states, “I wanted Brewer Dead. So dead, my tongue swelled fat with hexes, so fat I wonder how forgive could ever fit inside my mouth. Ross Byrd—the man whose father was dragged, urine soaked, by Lawrence behind a truck. Watch him say it, forgive.” (3). May’s persona doesn’t understand how Byrd’s son is able to forgive his murderers for his death, while he despises the evil men who did this, no matter how hard he tries to forgive. After researching and learning the disturbing details of Byrd’s death, it helps us understand May’s persona’s rage towards the murderers, from the talk of beating him, to defecation and urination on him, to then dragging him to his death by chaining him to a vehicle and driving away with him attached, you can see why May’s persona isn’t so forgiving towards the men who did these inhumane acts. May states, “Watch it spread like the flush of pancuronium bromide into diaphragm, watch close enough to pinpoint when the muscles lock.” (5). This is May speaking of the execution and how blind people were to the fact that this was a hate crime and saying they did not look at all the evidence. We reach the end of the poem, where May discusses the death penalty which two of the three murderers faced in this case with the one remaining, facing life in prison. May states, “If it is said the injection is humane, we mean to say this is humanity: no crack of rope, jerk of limb, no bloated face, clenched jaw, or reek rising twisted in smoke from a cooked torso” (6). May’s persona does not agree with this execution and ends the poem with the mention of a murder of crows.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's probably too early to tell yet, but I'm pretty confident the poetry of Jamaal May will last. His first book remains one of the most memorable first books I can think of. It's complex without being hermetic. Here's what I wrote a while back (the online link is below the copied little review):

For much of the last century, Detroit has been fertile ground for poetry, which has grown out of the industries, the struggles, the tragedies, and the resilience of the city. None has been more successful on the national poetry scene than Jamaal May.

May’s first book, Hum, beautifully published by Alice James Books in 2013, won several prizes. A hum can be a quiet song, but it is also the background noise of a city or a machine. Hum is an intricately organized book, centering on the words for certain fears and weaving those words in and out of various contexts. May is able to use his organizing principle to write love poems, humorous poems, deeply felt poems of loss, pictures of his city, and poems written in complicated traditional forms.

“The Hum of Zug Island,” for instance, refers to that phenomenon known as “the Windsor Hum,” which people across the Detroit River hear coming from the industrial island on the American side. Near the end of May’s collection, written in the form of a sestina (a strict pattern of repeated words), it repeats themes and ideas present throughout the book, yet it is able to capture its own ominous sense of place:

In Windsor they blame it on machines

across the Detroit River. Residents can’t ignore

the low frequency hum taking the shape of a sea-

serpent on the oscilloscopes. Beyond gray snow,

plastic bags, and crushed hypodermic needles,

Zug Island is humming–waiting

May has since been published widely in the literary press. One of his poems, “There Are Birds Here,” first appeared in Poetry, the oldest and most prestigious of poetry journals, and won several prizes. Dedicated to Detroit, the poem is a response to the “ruin porn” that has come to represent the city so often in years past. May writes about a boy in the city,

and no his smile isn’t much

like a skeleton at all. And no

his neighborhood is not like a war zone.

I am trying to say

his neighborhood

is as tattered and feathered

as anything else,

as shadow pierced by sun

and light parted

by shadow-dance as anything else,

but they won’t stop saying

how lovely the ruins,

how ruined the lovely

children must be in that birdless city.



https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the poetry books where each poem could be appreciated for the way in which it was written and thus enjoyed, even if it wasn't as resonant with you as a reader. It was a poetry book that read effortlessly and dragged my attention into it, the way poetry should be. It wasn't a burden to read these poems. In fact I was sucked in so deep that after some poems I went back to reread the poem since I wasn't ready to leave it.

The best, I'd have to say, were the following: "Hum of the Machine God", "How to Disappear Completely", "Hum of the Machinist's Lover", "Pomegranate Means Grenade", "Thinking Like a Split Melon", and "If They hand Your Remains to Your Sister in a Chinese Takeout Box".

It's a true gem of a collection, raw and honest when it comes to the essence of being human as well as touching upon the aspect that is the machine of life, the frequency with which each person resonates. If there is one new poetry collection or author you want to acquaint yourself with this year, this is the one.

[Alex Corley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book of poetry up on a whim while at my local library. As some other reviewers have stated the cover artwork has a steampunk theme and immediately drew me in and had me curious about what exactly the inner book held. I was hooked after only reading the first few lines of Still Life (the opening poem) and then once I got to Athazagoraphobia (Fear of Being Ignored) I was tremendously happy I chose to read this magical work of insightful art.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems is aptly named, as the hum of machinery is frequently evoked throughout. The repetition of themes is balanced out by a variety of forms, so that this collection has a cohesive feel but each poem still feels fresh and new.

Some of my favorites happened to be the poems with military imagery ("Triage," "The Man Who Paints Mountains and Helicopters," and "Pomegranate Means Grenade"). I also really liked "The God Engine," which had an interesting contrast between the naïve perspective of a child and the cold truths of the world.

Memorable Moments:

"and consider telling her the truth: / all will reach the pear's destination, / decay is a constant ferryman, and if forgotten, / everything in this freezer will burn." (from "The God Engine")

"You stand nameless in front of a tank against / those who would rather see you pull a pin / from a grenade than pull a pen / from your backpack. Jontae, / they are afraid." (from "Pomegranate Means Grenade")

"Rodney, you are / the spinning, you are the coin's ridge, / you are what happens between / sand/soil/clay and sky." (from "The Man Who Paints Mountains and Helicopters")

"about rivers / that fill seas that fill oceans / that throb with the electric blue / seahorse and ambling crabs." (from "Triage")

"a flashlight has more power on a southern roadside" (from "Man Matching Description")

"The last night of your last free summer, streetlights / added a sickly orange glow to the shimmer / of guns, slippery with sweat, so your son could see / the casual havoc of it all." (from "And Even the Living Are Lost")

[Ags · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great collection; I especially appreciated how many of the poems flowed into the next. For example, one poem would include a particular visual (e.g., a frozen frog), and then the next poem's title would feature that previous image (e.g., a title about a frog in springtime). Many repeated images/thoughtful callbacks connected the poems, too (e.g., sandboxes, birds/feathers, needles/seams, machine parts). Really nice "hum"/machine tie throughout, which especially shined in the poems that reflected the fall of Detroit's auto manufacturing. I really enjoyed the poems that took up the image others have vs. the actual life experiences of the young Black boys the speaker was writing about/as.

I did have trouble following some poems which, per usual, may say more about my own reading ability than the poems. But, I not-infrequently had an experience of getting to the end line of a poem, being like, "Woah" to the end line (e.g., because it had this heaviness or importance to it), and then re-reading the poem but still not quite getting the work as a whole. Relatedly, I wondered if this collection was a bit long? I think a collection with all the machine-related poems + all the war/combat + poems centering young people might be really solid. The alternating poems named after fears of specific things didn't always click as well with the collection for me?

[Josiah Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamaal May has a way with words, and I never knew which way that was. That’s sounds snide or rude, but I mean it truly as a compliment; but also, as a critique? I think?? No—I thought.

***

So this is 5 hours later.

The images bounce off the walls of these poems like they’re goddamn grenade in there people. Which while that image came to my head, just now—(4 hours later editing said review)—I am reminded of the poem with the pomegranate grenades!! Like what?? That picture is stuck in my mind permanently—the way I imagined the image suspended by itself. Because that’s how many of the images feel—suspended and separate. It was jarring for my eyes, and I read it fast. Frustrated writing this review the first time, I said I didn’t get it.

And then duh it dawned on me he’s a friggin poet and I didn’t even think to LISTEN to him read the poems!! I was like HA! You bum!

I’d rather just let him speak for himself so here’s the clip I watched: https://youtu.be/TMfzrAiNEis?si=kV-Th...

First review: 3

Second review: 4.555555

[Dallas Swindell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hum brims with tight, concisely narrative poems anchored in the expanse of extended metaphors. There is a quotient of the surreal within each stanza, but the ideas driving Jamaal May’s poems don’t dwell within this magical realism, sublimely pushing and pulling the reader through a hall of mirrors. Instead, the metaphors stand firm like pillars of thought or conviction, stationed and repeating, support for the fodder of each poem’s thesis. The eponymous Hum flutters and rumbles throughout the collection of poems, a personified unease and the modern world still hemmed and constricted by the social maladies of the past. The Hum is the inescapable forces of nature: the separation and return to nature’s embrace, the future outside the cyclical pattern of the present, the give and take of basic human wants and dreams. The book is a solid collection, one tied down with thematic clarity and arranged around motifs of past struggle informing present ruminating.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars!!!

Pros:
+ Black poet writing about machine themes!!!
+ stunning cover
+ the title "Hum" is actually the through-thread of the collection (machine & human humming)
+ lots of machine-hum-love-anger-death-electric imagery
+ such good human-AI/machine vibes which you knowwww I love

Fav Poems:
+ "How to Disappear Completely" (p. 6-7)
+ "The God Engine" (p. 55)
+ "Hum for the Bolt" (p. 64)
+ "Hum of the Machinist's Lover" (p. 30)
+ "The Boy Who Bathes the Dead" (p. 24)
+ "Athazagoraphobia (Fear of Being Ignored)" (p. 5)

Cons:
- didn't connect/love every poem (when do I ever?)
- more war imagery than I was prepared for

TW: weapons (guns, glass, electricity, etc.), war imagery, PTSD imagery, talk of suicide, murder, death, racism, execution, protesting, drug use, drug addiction

[Mitch Loflin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m in love with this collection. Every poem is so strong and they all connect so comfortably through this consistent vocabulary of images - of metal, and stone, and the hums and whirs of machinery - and every poem just feels like it was created so thoughtfully and lovingly and with such a command of the words and syntax that make them up. They’re just so good!!!

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such beautiful poems; the title really describes the reading experience.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this during Black History Month. I'm ready for everyone to praise me for it.

[Sophie Cornwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will never again be afraid to straight up name drop in poetry again.

[Jas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing collection of poems. I look forward to reading more of this author.

[Becky Brahier · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only IG purchase I've made that I didn't regret

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like I should write a review for this collection, because it was good. (I'm just really lazy…)

Whatever the case, this is really thought-provoking collection of poems. Trauma (whether it be from war, abuse, loss, etc.) is interwoven through so many of this poems and expressed in such different ways.

This is such a clichéd way to describe this collection (especially considering the fact that it reflects Detroit), but it's gritty. It has this steampunk vibe that I really dig, where you can see that relationship that humans have with machinery. His poems have this physicality to them, ranging from the way he draws direct attention to body parts (human or machine), the way words sound in your mouth (seriously, try reading some of them aloud).

My favorite poem was "Paper Crane on Letting Go." I honestly couldn't tell you why I was so drawn to this particular poem, but I had to sit on this one for a while and even wrote it down.

[Dan Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books of poetry I've ever read. The amount of thought and detail May put into this is incredible. Not only are all of the poems singularly great, but they weave together in a way that makes the sum even greater than the parts.

[André Habet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I live you is a mistake I make so often,
I wonder if it's not
what I've been really meaning to say.

[Vincent Perrone · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is resilience in succumbing to the hum. There is a gentleness in the violence, disruptions, fears, paper cranes, papers tigers—throughout the entire vibrant collection. Every syllable has been locked in, with room for breath, bird wings, and elegies. But still in the most unwound emotions, the lines remain equally compact and charged.

May casts a wide net in form and subject. The hazy Masticated Light unfolds in a terse narrative and vision loss leads to a new image of self and memory. Paper Crane on Letting Go flitters across the page while Looks Like a Boy flattens and squeezes perception and possibility into a dense column. Many of the poems turn midline from retelling to reliving, spinning language inward, closer to the cut. Otherwise, as in The God Engine, they drift into their own images like a camera zooming in and transitioning us to another world.

A collection tangled by fears, machines, the contradictions we discover within and without ourselves—Hum proves you can be exacting and kind in the same line.

[Cecil]

Fantastic book— A lot of very visceral storytelling in here, and the structure through which the book progresses and how it is broken into each section makes each poem uplift and highlight the others around it. Sometimes I could only read a few poems at a time because each one is like a gut punch.
There's some really incredible language in here which is mainly why I wanted to review it, so I can remember the lines for later:

"-as brutal and impeccable as it'd be to soar/ from a crossbow with a whistle and feel/ a man switch off upon my arrival" (Hum for the Bolt)

"-moments after their video footage/ of young men dropping from helicopters/ in night vision goggles. I want you to see/ in the dark without covering your face," (Pomegranate Means Grenade)

"The current that sparks, scrambles up/ fingertips, hurrying to your heart/ will not come as a hot, ragged/ light—you won't notice when it arrives." (Mechanophobia)

[Basia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Hum poems (especially “Hum of the Machinist’s Lover” and “Hum for the Bolt”), which are like odes full of singing and buzzing we may not usually be attuned to. Throughout the book, actually, there’s this engagement with anthropomorphism that uplifts not just animals—the usual subjects we personify—but the frequencies of machines and other inanimate things that we consider lifeless (even inanimate versions of animate beings, like his paper frogs and paper tigers!), without the self-centeredness that often comes with the anthropomorphic. Instead, there’s reverence and care and precision. And in between that, there is a persistent tenderness in the face of violence and grief, death and loss. Plus, Jamaal May is just a language sorcerer; so many of the poems are so satisfying to read aloud. A stunner of a book!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this collection of poems. I liked his newer collection better - but this one is excellent as well. The poet always makes me think. His poems are broken up with poems about “fears” - many phobias I didn’t know existed. He takes the word and he casts it broader than I would have seen otherwise. I hear the hum: the word that echoes throughout, in the constant sounds around us. I hear it in the whirr of the air conditioner where I type, in the buzz of the lights above me, in the rhythms of the music from a passing car. Hum. Indeed. I loved this.

[Farron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jamaal May’s Hum paints a landscape that feels apocalyptic, a vision of Detroit where machines and concrete have replaced flora and fauna. Themes of isolation, grief, and injustice permeate, even haunt the collection. May deftly utilizes strong imagery and inventive metaphor, often highlighting the absurd, almost surreal experience of having to exist in an uncaring world while shattered by grief. While the collection is mainly free verse in a more constrained style, May’s departures into more formal and traditions are also a treat, showcasing an admirable range.

[Christina Hopp · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many beautiful poems in this collection. The whole book is underlined with my favorite weird comparisons and phrases - he has such a unique voice. I enjoyed taking my time and experiencing each poem, really trying to find what he's trying to say. Jamaal May is officially one of my favorite poets and I really recommend this poetry book!

[Madelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off -- the cover is incredible and I saw it immediately.

Hum is a wonderful collection of poetry with heart, grit and subtle rhythmic tones. I finished it in one sitting over lunch, absolutely adored it. My favorite is A Detroit Hum End with Bones.

Hum hooked me and I'll now read anything May writes!