There’s a Hum by Jeanne-Marie Osterman

Jeanne-Marie Osterman’s poetry is the poetry of the people.

The poems in this collection, There’s A Hum, have people in them that talk, that love, that get sick; people that have stuff, and buy things, and drive, and accidentally cut tails off of a dog, that buy buses in Corpus Christi, that think about race and whiteness, and money, and poetry. Every poem in this book is a story. Every poem in this book embraces the reader, fully. These are beautiful poems because they make sense and they carry on through till the next day. That is, you will remember them after you have read them. You might have read “Assisted Living,” with all of its big heart, or, “For I Will Sing of Telephone Wires,” with all of its lyrical repetition, on a Tuesday, and on a Thursday, looking out a window, they will come back to you, land on your shoulder, a bird, a cockatiel, and will sing a song and you will find yourself singing along with it, humming.

–Matthew Lippman, author of American Chew