American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR
The black poet would love to say his century began
With Hughes or God forbid, Wheatley, but actually
It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,
Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset
Bridges & windows. In a second I'll tell you how little
Writing rescues.
So begins this astonishing, muscular sequence by one of America's best-selling and most acclaimed poets. Over 70 poems, each titled 'American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin' and shot through with the vernacular energy of popular culture, Terrance Hayes manoeuvres his way between touching domestic visions, stories of love, loss and creation, tributes to the fallen and blistering denunciations of the enemies of the good.
American Sonnets builds a living picture of the whole self, and the whole human, even as it opens to the view the dividing lines of race, gender and political oppression which define the early 21st Century. It is compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, bewildered - and unstoppably, rhythmically compelling, as few books can hope to be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hayes (How to Be Drawn) addresses this marvelous series of 70 free-verse sonnets to his potential assassin: a nameless, faceless embodiment of America's penchant for racially motivated violence. The poems are redolent of Hayes's signature rhythmic artistry and wordplay: "After death. Our warriors, weirdos, antiheroes, our sirs,/ Sires, our sighers, sidewinders & whiners, winos/ And wonders become dust." Hayes mockingly refers to President Trump as "Mister Trumpet" and excoriates his fellow Americans for seeking "A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection/ Of your own." He captures the existential dread of the first year of Trump's presidency accurately, but also provides some whimsy for the weary, referring to the present time as "The umpteenth slump/ In our humming democracy, a bumble bureaucracy/ With teeny tiny wings too small for its rumpled,/ Dumpling of a body." Hayes references a range of poetic precursors and sings the praises of numerous black cultural figures, including Langston Hughes, Jimi Hendrix, and Toni Morrison. An ode to James Baldwin describes the crease between his eyes as "a riverbed branching/ Into tributaries like lines of rapturous sentences/ Searching for a period." Inventive as ever, Hayes confronts America's myriad ills with unflinching candor, while leaving space for love, humor, and hope.
