Description

A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. Since the publication of his first book, Muscular Music, in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America's most exciting and innovative poets, winning acclaim for his sly, twisting, jazzy poems, and his mastery of emotive, restless wordplay.

In So to Speak, his seventh collection, a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds, talking cats tell jokes in the Jim Crow South and a father addresses his daughter. In lyric fables, folk sonnets, quarantine quatrains and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas, Bob Ross paints your portrait, green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne and elegies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amid the pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the often-incomprehensible predicaments of the present, as Hayes shapes music into language, and language into music.

 

Paperback

Publication: 25 Jul 2024, Penguin
ISBN: 9781802063394

Extent: 112 pages

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So to Speak by Terrance Hayes

    A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future... Read more

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      Description

      A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. Since the publication of his first book, Muscular Music, in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America's most exciting and innovative poets, winning acclaim for his sly, twisting, jazzy poems, and his mastery of emotive, restless wordplay.

      In So to Speak, his seventh collection, a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds, talking cats tell jokes in the Jim Crow South and a father addresses his daughter. In lyric fables, folk sonnets, quarantine quatrains and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas, Bob Ross paints your portrait, green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne and elegies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amid the pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the often-incomprehensible predicaments of the present, as Hayes shapes music into language, and language into music.

       

      Paperback

      Publication: 25 Jul 2024, Penguin
      ISBN: 9781802063394

      Extent: 112 pages

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