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A review by paul_viaf
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
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!