Terrance Hayes, American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

Poetry Study Day, 19 October 2019

Thanks to Oliver Goldstein for introducing us to the remarkable poetry of Terrance Hayes, especially American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018). We studied the sonnet which begins:

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,
Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.
I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat
Grinder to separate the song of the bird from the bone.
I lock your persona in a dream-inducing sleeper hold
While your better selves watch from the bleachers.
[…]

You can read the full sonnet on the Poetry Foundation (US) website.

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Listen to Terrance Hayes read this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
Spencer Hupp, Essay on the American Sonnets, Sewanee Review

Terrance Hayes