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Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes Biography

Poet

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“The man was high yellow In public, afraid of himself, pretending his music Was material when in fact, it was the opposite: Like a breath that comes so quickly you know You’re breathing ether: either atmospheric And anonymous as the air against a window, Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“I remember my sister’s last hoorah. She joined all the black people I’m tired of losing, All the dead from parts of Florida, Ferguson, Brooklyn, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, wherever the names alive are Like the names in graves. I am someone With a good memory & better imagination.”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Possibly twilight makes blackness dangerous Darkness. Probably all my encounters Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say, A nigga can survive. Something happened In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens Almost everywhere in this country every day. Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters. You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names In graves.”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Glad someone shot deserved to be shot finally, George Wallace. After you send your basket of balms And berries for the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham, After you add your palms to the psalms & palm covered Caskets of the girls the bomb buried in Birmingham, I’ll muster a pinch of prayer for you. You are the blind Protagonist of a story that begins, “In my previous life My work involved returning runaway slaves to slavery,” And ends with the image of a black nurse pushing Your old ass in a wheelchair. Can you guess what black Folk passing empty cotton fields feel, George Wallace? I damn you with the opposite of that feeling. I keep thinking I’m confessing for the first time, the reason I fear you, And you keep asking why I’m telling this old story again.”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Even the most kindhearted white woman, Dragging herself through traffic with her nails On the wheel & her head in a chamber of black Modern American music may begin, almost Carelessly, to breathe n-words. Yes, even the most Bespectacled hallucination cruising the lanes Of America may find her tongue curls inward, Entangling her windpipe, her vents, toes & pedals When she drives alone. Even the most made up Layers of persona in a two- or four-door vehicle Sealed in a fountain of bass & black boys Chanting n-words may begin to chant inwardly Softly before she can catch herself. Of course, After that, what is inward, is absorbed.”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader You despise, the racists said when the president Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too. Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty, Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs?”

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Book:American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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“Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.”

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Author:Terrance Hayes
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“One of Still Lifes many achievements is its paradoxical mix of intensity and stillness. Alexander Longs visions of landscape, identity and "History itself, a joke that no one gets" are simultaneously meditative and alert, restless and focused. This is a smart, compassionate poet. Still Life is a mesmerizing new book.”

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Author:Terrance Hayes
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“I'm chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people's expectations. I think music is the primary model-how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I'm just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.”

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Author:Terrance Hayes
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“In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera’s work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day.”

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Author:Terrance Hayes
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