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gregory_glover's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.5
Challenging is an understatement. Beautiful, poignant, ugly, graphic, terrible, haunting, brilliant,….. I have to come back to it. Maybe it should be required reading for the 4th of July. (Is “patriotic” too loaded a term for what Hayes is doing? It is a tortured love of country, for sure.) I’m sure I didn’t grasp even half of it. To take the sonnet (?) form for this content is a bold choice, as is the traditional first line index rather than individual titles or even numbers to define discrete poems. A masterpiece (would Hayes allow the word?) of contemporary poetry and literature more broadly.
willthesecond's review against another edition
5.0
terrence hays does some magical and delicious things with language and rhythm
in this. it sounds like rap album of the year with a fee diss tracks that penetrate so deeply
in this. it sounds like rap album of the year with a fee diss tracks that penetrate so deeply
paul_viaf's review against another edition
4.0
When the poem becomes so enigmatic it becomes difficult to reconcile, it suffices to let the beauty of the syntax and diction wash over the reader to allow the artform to seep into the pores rather than to waste one’s time deciphering the process by which it is made. If one spends too much time thinking about the recipe while one eats, do they truly ever savor? This is how I would describe my experience reading this complex collection of poems.
The collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, encompasses the spirit of one black man within his community and the multiplicity of his perspectives. As such, Hayes imbues the body of his poetic and humanistic existence with all the rich, lustful, infuriating, confusing, and deprave complexity life seems to thrust upon us.
Race is an inextricable subject within the American dialectic and this is exacerbated more so by the ways in which black people have come to inhabit, endure, survive, and in their own ways celebrate, the American experience. As a part of this celebration or homage, Hayes invokes titans of black culture (and in truth many cultures) from all platforms. Medical, artistic, literary, political and so forth. Although many, each reference was meticulous. Whether contemporary or archaic, whether pop or high art, in all sorts of subject matter, their integration worked great as punctuation, as integral, and as unique. None were executed in pretension, but of pure artistic necessity. The collection indeed pays homage to the ancestral voices who spoke up and built out. Although a great pain seems to linger throughout the collection, a range of emotions are thoroughly explored. Hayes’ tone hops from seductive, to confused, to depressed, to playful, to enraged, to contemplative, to psychotic, and everything in between.
There is a wide array of subject matter, but Terrance Hayes most certainly takes on the brazen and narcissistic attitude of America and places the mirror before our preening and monstrous pose. This work invokes some of the first poetic commentary on the Trump I’ve read. As such, this book means more to me after the storming of the Capitol. American insurrectionists plotted to assassinate members of Congress. Whether past, present, or future, these assassins exist. In body. In spirit. In politic. In the erosion of civility, of democracy, of a nation. One can say the American body politic is sick or being hunted or exhibiting symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Hayes sees this clearly and conveys it in creative yet punitive terms.
Hayes' poetry is challenging in many ways, not only for the complexity of the subject matter and language, but for the unconventional ways in which it goes about forming the poetics. Hayes poesy not only challenges American hegemony and its various forms of oppression, the totality of the collection functions as a formulaic rearrangement that challenges poetic norms. The sonnet is reimagined, if not utterly broken and disregarded, though he preserves the 14 line parameter.
Hayes also challenges convention by how he entitles his poems. The title of each poem; which is the same throughout, seems to function as a reiteration. As something that pounds the mind. Constantly grinds into the skin. Has one mumbling mindlessly as if from a state of deep-seated trauma. One cannot afford to forget the concept when your mortality is made evident on a daily basis. The title then almost serves as a chant. A red blinking light which refuses to stop sounding the alarm. If the emergency refuses to cease, why should those sounding the alarm be called to do so?
As stated earlier, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, functions as both the title of the book and every poem within it. This suggests that If the sonnets are for his PAST and FUTURE assassin, then that means the speaker has been killed and will be killed. This is the constant affirmation of mortality that I speak of. This also speaks to the ever-present lingering of pain. There is both a killing and a deadening that has already occurred, one that will persist on its very own in the future. It is many deaths. Multiple deaths. A deathly process endured. Deaths and killings from which one must be resurrected, recovered and rehabilitated, and those that will eat away at the present when one knows it could come at any moment. An assassin works in stealth. It is daunting and exhilarating way to live, on the precipice of impending and lurking death. One that must be recorded, and how grandly it is!
The collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, encompasses the spirit of one black man within his community and the multiplicity of his perspectives. As such, Hayes imbues the body of his poetic and humanistic existence with all the rich, lustful, infuriating, confusing, and deprave complexity life seems to thrust upon us.
Race is an inextricable subject within the American dialectic and this is exacerbated more so by the ways in which black people have come to inhabit, endure, survive, and in their own ways celebrate, the American experience. As a part of this celebration or homage, Hayes invokes titans of black culture (and in truth many cultures) from all platforms. Medical, artistic, literary, political and so forth. Although many, each reference was meticulous. Whether contemporary or archaic, whether pop or high art, in all sorts of subject matter, their integration worked great as punctuation, as integral, and as unique. None were executed in pretension, but of pure artistic necessity. The collection indeed pays homage to the ancestral voices who spoke up and built out. Although a great pain seems to linger throughout the collection, a range of emotions are thoroughly explored. Hayes’ tone hops from seductive, to confused, to depressed, to playful, to enraged, to contemplative, to psychotic, and everything in between.
There is a wide array of subject matter, but Terrance Hayes most certainly takes on the brazen and narcissistic attitude of America and places the mirror before our preening and monstrous pose. This work invokes some of the first poetic commentary on the Trump I’ve read. As such, this book means more to me after the storming of the Capitol. American insurrectionists plotted to assassinate members of Congress. Whether past, present, or future, these assassins exist. In body. In spirit. In politic. In the erosion of civility, of democracy, of a nation. One can say the American body politic is sick or being hunted or exhibiting symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Hayes sees this clearly and conveys it in creative yet punitive terms.
Hayes' poetry is challenging in many ways, not only for the complexity of the subject matter and language, but for the unconventional ways in which it goes about forming the poetics. Hayes poesy not only challenges American hegemony and its various forms of oppression, the totality of the collection functions as a formulaic rearrangement that challenges poetic norms. The sonnet is reimagined, if not utterly broken and disregarded, though he preserves the 14 line parameter.
Hayes also challenges convention by how he entitles his poems. The title of each poem; which is the same throughout, seems to function as a reiteration. As something that pounds the mind. Constantly grinds into the skin. Has one mumbling mindlessly as if from a state of deep-seated trauma. One cannot afford to forget the concept when your mortality is made evident on a daily basis. The title then almost serves as a chant. A red blinking light which refuses to stop sounding the alarm. If the emergency refuses to cease, why should those sounding the alarm be called to do so?
As stated earlier, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, functions as both the title of the book and every poem within it. This suggests that If the sonnets are for his PAST and FUTURE assassin, then that means the speaker has been killed and will be killed. This is the constant affirmation of mortality that I speak of. This also speaks to the ever-present lingering of pain. There is both a killing and a deadening that has already occurred, one that will persist on its very own in the future. It is many deaths. Multiple deaths. A deathly process endured. Deaths and killings from which one must be resurrected, recovered and rehabilitated, and those that will eat away at the present when one knows it could come at any moment. An assassin works in stealth. It is daunting and exhilarating way to live, on the precipice of impending and lurking death. One that must be recorded, and how grandly it is!
jesshooves's review against another edition
5.0
Powerhouse poems. Jaw on the floor. And mind opened. So many truths and loaded lines. #HayesSlays
“Probably all my encounters / Are existential jambalaya.” (p. 9)
“Still, I speak for the dead. You will never assassinate my ghosts.” (p.17)
“Like no / Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants / Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists.” (p. 32)
“You ain’t allowed to deride / Women when you’ve never wept in front of a woman / that wasn’t your mother.” (p. 38)
“Whale-road is a kenning for sea. Time-machine / Is a kenning for the mind.”
“Probably all my encounters / Are existential jambalaya.” (p. 9)
“Still, I speak for the dead. You will never assassinate my ghosts.” (p.17)
“Like no / Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants / Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists.” (p. 32)
“You ain’t allowed to deride / Women when you’ve never wept in front of a woman / that wasn’t your mother.” (p. 38)
“Whale-road is a kenning for sea. Time-machine / Is a kenning for the mind.”
studeronomy's review against another edition
4.0
So I'm the fool who didn't realize that Terrance Hayes, a famous poet who won the National Book Award, is Black. Honest I didn't. I don't "follow" contemporary poetry so much as I consume vast quantities of it haphazardly without system or curriculum and without knowing *anything* about the authors, so I didn't know Terrance Hayes was Black. I didn't look at his photo and I didn't read the back of the book, I just saw the title and checked it out from the library and started reading.
Pretty quickly it became clear to me that this was a book inspired by Trump's 2016 election, a book about the violence and decay inherent in modern America (same as it ever was). The first couple lines of the first sonnet reference Langston Hughes and Phillis Wheatley, who are wrongly viewed as the two parents of Black American poetry, when in fact parents—like all ancestors—always appear by the dozens and only get more numerous the further back you go. Anyway, the Hughes and Wheatley references should've been a tip-off that these poems were written by a Black poet who reflects a Black American lyrical perspective. But I'm pretty dense.
So my experience of "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin" was one of a poet's Blackness slowly dawning on me as I read, thickheaded, through the book. I'm a white guy from the Internet who views most things through the lens of a white guy from the Internet (I'm never sure whether to capitalize "white" so I don't), and so I read these sonnets and identified with some of them, and identified, and identified, until suddenly I wasn't identifying so much, or there were snippets of disidentification that had been there from the beginning, and then other moments when I felt alienated by the poems or angry at the poet, because you can't be a white American reader of Black American poetry and not get angry and defensive at *some* point, and then I'm like, "Oh wait—Terrance Hayes is Black. Of course he's Black! He wrote Lighthead!" Somehow I knew about "Lighthead," maybe because I listen to NPR, even though I hate NPR. But I remembered "Lighthead" and then it all clicked in my brain who Terrance Hayes was.
That's three whole paragraphs I just wrote about Hayes's identity right there. Will I write three more paragraphs about the sonnets, divorced from commentary about Hayes's racial identity? Is that even possible? Whether or not it's possible, I'll bet you wish I wouldn't write three more paragraphs about any of it, because that's a lot, too much, and I've already written a lot.
But here's one more paragraph about Hayes's perspective, something in the book I didn't identify with but felt moved by: the inevitability of assassination, the relationship (premised on violence) between the American nation and the Black national subject (because you can be a national subject without being treated like a citizen). Maybe there's some kind of Calvinist predestination in the Black American experience, described here by Hayes, because you can't escape what's coming, and what's coming is bad, and what's coming has been decided for you. Maybe that's why Calvinism never really "stuck" with Black American Christianity.
But predestination, yeah, that's why the title of this volume is so great: the assassin is of course in the future. The assassin is always gonna be there. The assassin is in the past too, because of something something outside time. The assassin is inevitable both ways. Look backwards, there he is. Look forward, here he comes.
A couple poems from the book:
"I only intend to send word to my future
Self perpetuation is a war against Time
Travel is essentially the aim of any religion
Is blindness the color one sees under water
Breath can be overshadowed in darkness
The benefits of blackness can seem radical
Black people in America are rarely compulsive
Hi-fivers believe joy is a matter of touching others
Is forbidden the only word God doesn’t know
You have to heal yourself to truly be heroic
You have to think once a day of killing your self
Awareness requires a touch of blindness & self
Importance is the only word God knows
To be free is to live because only the dead are slaves"
And:
"In a parallel world where all Dr. Who's
Are black, I'm the doctor who knows no god
Is more powerful than Time. In a parallel world
Where all the doctors who are black see cops
Box black boys in cop cars & caskets, I'm
The doctor who blacks out whenever he sees
A police box. In a parallel world where doctors
Who box cops in caskets cry doing their jobs,
I disappear inside a skull that's larger on the inside.
Question: if, in a parallel world where every Dr.
Who was black, you were the complex Time Lord,
When & where would you explore? My answer is,
A brother has to know how to time travel & doctor
Himself when a knee or shoe stalls against his neck."
Every sonnet in this volume is a kind of gunshot, an act of self-defense, and there are plenty of misfires (a little rambling at times but who am I to talk), but when they hit, they hit good. Real good.
Pretty quickly it became clear to me that this was a book inspired by Trump's 2016 election, a book about the violence and decay inherent in modern America (same as it ever was). The first couple lines of the first sonnet reference Langston Hughes and Phillis Wheatley, who are wrongly viewed as the two parents of Black American poetry, when in fact parents—like all ancestors—always appear by the dozens and only get more numerous the further back you go. Anyway, the Hughes and Wheatley references should've been a tip-off that these poems were written by a Black poet who reflects a Black American lyrical perspective. But I'm pretty dense.
So my experience of "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin" was one of a poet's Blackness slowly dawning on me as I read, thickheaded, through the book. I'm a white guy from the Internet who views most things through the lens of a white guy from the Internet (I'm never sure whether to capitalize "white" so I don't), and so I read these sonnets and identified with some of them, and identified, and identified, until suddenly I wasn't identifying so much, or there were snippets of disidentification that had been there from the beginning, and then other moments when I felt alienated by the poems or angry at the poet, because you can't be a white American reader of Black American poetry and not get angry and defensive at *some* point, and then I'm like, "Oh wait—Terrance Hayes is Black. Of course he's Black! He wrote Lighthead!" Somehow I knew about "Lighthead," maybe because I listen to NPR, even though I hate NPR. But I remembered "Lighthead" and then it all clicked in my brain who Terrance Hayes was.
That's three whole paragraphs I just wrote about Hayes's identity right there. Will I write three more paragraphs about the sonnets, divorced from commentary about Hayes's racial identity? Is that even possible? Whether or not it's possible, I'll bet you wish I wouldn't write three more paragraphs about any of it, because that's a lot, too much, and I've already written a lot.
But here's one more paragraph about Hayes's perspective, something in the book I didn't identify with but felt moved by: the inevitability of assassination, the relationship (premised on violence) between the American nation and the Black national subject (because you can be a national subject without being treated like a citizen). Maybe there's some kind of Calvinist predestination in the Black American experience, described here by Hayes, because you can't escape what's coming, and what's coming is bad, and what's coming has been decided for you. Maybe that's why Calvinism never really "stuck" with Black American Christianity.
But predestination, yeah, that's why the title of this volume is so great: the assassin is of course in the future. The assassin is always gonna be there. The assassin is in the past too, because of something something outside time. The assassin is inevitable both ways. Look backwards, there he is. Look forward, here he comes.
A couple poems from the book:
"I only intend to send word to my future
Self perpetuation is a war against Time
Travel is essentially the aim of any religion
Is blindness the color one sees under water
Breath can be overshadowed in darkness
The benefits of blackness can seem radical
Black people in America are rarely compulsive
Hi-fivers believe joy is a matter of touching others
Is forbidden the only word God doesn’t know
You have to heal yourself to truly be heroic
You have to think once a day of killing your self
Awareness requires a touch of blindness & self
Importance is the only word God knows
To be free is to live because only the dead are slaves"
And:
"In a parallel world where all Dr. Who's
Are black, I'm the doctor who knows no god
Is more powerful than Time. In a parallel world
Where all the doctors who are black see cops
Box black boys in cop cars & caskets, I'm
The doctor who blacks out whenever he sees
A police box. In a parallel world where doctors
Who box cops in caskets cry doing their jobs,
I disappear inside a skull that's larger on the inside.
Question: if, in a parallel world where every Dr.
Who was black, you were the complex Time Lord,
When & where would you explore? My answer is,
A brother has to know how to time travel & doctor
Himself when a knee or shoe stalls against his neck."
Every sonnet in this volume is a kind of gunshot, an act of self-defense, and there are plenty of misfires (a little rambling at times but who am I to talk), but when they hit, they hit good. Real good.
roeiwrites's review against another edition
5.0
Hayes has a way of slowly leading you along and then grabbing your heart out of your chest in the next line. Some of them will linger in your head for weeks and weeks. A must-read volume of poetry, and a timely one.
suzimagee's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Powerful, engaging, personal, revolutionary.
Wonderful book, highly recommended.
Wonderful book, highly recommended.