Description

Book Synopsis

A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Since the publication of his first book, Muscular Music, in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America''s most exciting and innovative poets, winning acclaim for his sly, twisting, jazzy poems, and his mastery of emotive, restless wordplay.

In So to Speak, his seventh collection, a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds, talking cats tell jokes in the Jim Crow South and a father addresses his daughter. In lyric fables, folk sonnets, quarantine quatrains and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas, Bob Ross paints your portrait, green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne and elegies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amid the pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the often-incomprehensible predicaments of the present, as Hayes shapes music into language, and language into music.

So To Speak

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    A Paperback by Terrance Hayes

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      Book details

      Publisher Penguin Random House Group
      Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
      Published 1/25/2024
      ISBN-13 9781802063394
      978-1802063394
      ISBN-10 1802063390

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

      Since the publication of his first book, Muscular Music, in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America''s most exciting and innovative poets, winning acclaim for his sly, twisting, jazzy poems, and his mastery of emotive, restless wordplay.

      In So to Speak, his seventh collection, a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds, talking cats tell jokes in the Jim Crow South and a father addresses his daughter. In lyric fables, folk sonnets, quarantine quatrains and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas, Bob Ross paints your portrait, green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne and elegies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amid the pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the often-incomprehensible predicaments of the present, as Hayes shapes music into language, and language into music.

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