The third collection of poetry from the author of Lighthead, winner
of the 2010 National Book Award
Watch for the new collection of poetry from Terrance Hayes, American
Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, coming in June of 2018
Terrance Hayes is an elegant and adventurous writer with disarming
humor, grace, tenderness, and brilliant turns of phrase. He is very much
interested in what it means to be an artist and a black man. In his
first collection, Muscular Music, he took the reader through a
living library of cultural icons, from Shaft and Fat Albert to John
Coltrane and Miles Davis. His second collection, Hip Logic, continued
these explorations of popular culture, fatherhood, cultural heritage,
and loss. Wind in a Box, Hayes's resonant new collection, continues
his interest in how traditions (of poetry and culture alike) can be
simultaneously upended and embraced. The struggle for freedom (the wind)
within containment (the box) is the unifying motif as Hayes explores how
identity is shaped by race, heritage, and spirituality. This new book
displays not only what the Los Angeles Times calls the range of a
bold virtuoso, but also the imaginative fervor of a poet in love with
poetry.