Lullaby
Christine Hume
James Marks, Contributor
September 2008
composed...in the voice of instinct, one in which 'Holes in the words dilate and dream.'
Chris Glomski
Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active Sense is an essay-poem with a soundtrack. The text uses the lullaby to investigate rhythm as innate instinct and drive. James Marks is the musician behind the CD that accompanies the text, which is a collage of found sounds interlaced with a more traditionally composed acoustic guitar instrumentation. The music is meant to give the reader a more engrossed and nuanced sense of the “event” of the text and of the lullaby itself as an all-encompassing, complex sensory experience.
About the Author
Christine Hume is the author of a lyric memoir in the form of three interwoven essays, Saturation Project (Solid Objects), as well as three books of poetry. Her chapbooks include Lullaby (UDP), Ventifacts (Omnidawn), Atalanta: An Anatomy (Essay Press), and a collaboration with Jeff Clark, Question Like a Face (Image Text Ithaca), noted as one of Brooklyn Rail’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2017. She teaches in the interdisciplinary creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.
Praise
Lullaby is composed...in the voice of instinct, one in which “Holes in the words dilate and dream.” And in their dream, ears can “pant” quite naturally, like mouths lapping at a “rhythm” that “localizes the infinite.” At its best, Lullaby becomes a “bacterial” presence covering us “over with [its] skin” until the “I” is “carried away.” Yet what I like best about Lullaby is its ultimate call to wakefulness; the way text and music point us back to a mutually shared, constant backdrop of things to hear.
Chris Glomski, Jacket2
About the Contributor
Educated in music by the loneliness of the pre-dawn happenstance electronics, James Marks lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with his wife and two children.
In the News
Publication Details
Chapbook
Hand-bound. 16 pp, 5.25 x 10 in
Publication Date: September 01 2008