![]() ![]() In a mere eighty-nine pages, Hayes uncoils social commentary that is as poignant as it is creative. Grinder to separate the song of the bird form the bone. I lock you in a form that is part music box, part meat Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame. I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, In American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Hayes sets a menacing tone: Countless others remain unnamed, haunting our consciousness. Many of these bodies are ones we know-Maxine Waters, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, the Obama’s, Aretha Franklin. Through a poetics of touching inherent in the very structure of these linked sonnets, Hayes builds a sense of bodies stacked. The corporal anxiety of the collection mirrors the corporality of 2018, a year in which so many bodies were sacrificed. ![]() ![]() Hayes’s keen focus on bodies creates a striking portrait of contemporary American life. Border Patrol custody and was reminded of the work’s visceral nature. I revisited the politically charged poetry collection on the day a seven-year-old child died while in U.S. Re-reading American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Poets, 2018) at the end of 2018 was literally hard to stomach. ![]()
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