Want to reread the second half. For now, 3½. Could change.

**Update: Reread. This is a strong 4½ . Guess I was too wine-soaked on my first read to fully engage.

The heart, biologically speaking, is ugly as it pumps
its passion & fear down the veins. Which is to say,
starting out we have no wounds to speak of
beyond the ways our parents expressed their love.2023 poetry4 s Elena159 42

this guy gets me every time :’)3 s Anatoly MolotkovAuthor 2 books41

"Solace, survival, multiple genres of longing.// I remember how seeing a white woman walking alone/ A few steps ahead of me late one night spooked me// So much I slowed and cast a harmless warble/ Into evening. Sometimes even at a distance,// I know what unsettles this country can also unsettle me./ Sometimes fear tells us exactly where we are heading." This sad, empowering, reflective and structurally innovative new collection from Terrance Hayes provides invaluable commentary on the American reality.1 Carolyn1,772 77

Terrance Hayes is just so very wicked smart. I love that you can see that in his poems AND YET they are still, for the most part, decipherable. I've been reading and rereading this collection all month and every time i get through it, I've turned down five or six more corners. It's basically the whole book at this point. There's so much precision social commentary while also having so many moments that seem quite personal. It's just so good. black-lives-matter poetry1 Jason Rosenstock49 1 follower

Creative, thought-provoking, clear. Best poet writing right now.1 Reagan Kapasi530 4

For you when want a varied look at the black, American experience with many references to pop culture iconspoetry1 Renee Morales89

3.5-4

i had some trouble with this collection at first just because i didn't connect to hayes riffing on himself as much as i did some of his other poems. "watch your mouth" was somewhat meh to me and didn't pick up momentum until the next section. that being said when the poems picked up they really picked up.

quoting some of my favorites right now...

"You are not you for long. / I am not trying to change the world, / I am trying to change myself / so that the world will seem changed."

"Nature does not destroy, / Only change... Tell me what you pray when you are broken or break."

won't quote an excerpt bc i just love so much of "How to Fold" that I suggest just reading it. that poem is soooo tender y'all please mind me jumping from stanza to stanza in these quotations but: "When you find your phantom lover's item in the pile, you will have to decide how to handle it... When it is an undergarment, you may grasp the heat which does not linger in silk or lace... You cannot live without the heat and iron of love..." this is prob my favorite one of the entire book how personal this idea of yearning for your lover through the warmth of their clothes produced by their own body heat and trying to replicate that kind of sensation through an iron or dryer or another artificial means of reproducing ugh but then the smell is off because what you're looking for is the scent of the person you love not detergent not neutrality and i'm saying all of this now (literally rambling) to emphasize that the space my brain's at now makes it so the kind of intimacy hayes writes about in this become translates so loud and revelatory and necessary to me please promise me you'll read this poem if you don't read any others.

i overall enjoyed the collection but having read american sonnets and lighthead b4 i wouldn't consider it a hayes CLASSIC but it's still amazing come on its terrance hayes

also subtle flex that i got to hear him perform "Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait" last year at NYU and his genius filled the auditorium he is god in his own right.

TLDR read the book if you got 1.5 hours of free time :)poetry2 s David40 1 follower

This new book from Terrance Hayes is full of wisdom, formal innovation, and crackling tight whiplash language in just about every poem. This collection contains the Do it Yourself Sestina templates that caused such a splash when they came out in Poetry.
It is full of the type of insights we have come to expect from Hayes, for example, this one from Taffetta
You are not you for long. / I am not trying to change the world, /I am trying to change myself / so that the world will seem changed.
I think I learned most from the way this volume uses threads of sound and repeated phrases to tie together almost every poem in the volume. Here is an example of this magic from Do Not Put Your Head Under Your Arm
Each new pair of glasses assures things / never look the same, but several glasses / of liquor can create the same feeling. / Balance the morass & the molasses of jackasses.

The volume also contains a few of the American Sonnets we fell in love with from Hayes’s previous volume. I’ve included my favorite as an example.
The companion book Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry is also out now! Mike1,387 23

American Sonnet for the New Year

Things got terribly ugly incredibly quickly
Things got ugly embarrassingly quickly
actually Things got ugly unbelievably quickly
honestly Things got ugly seemingly infrequently
initially Things got ugly ironically usually
awfully carefully Things got ugly unsuccessfully
occasionally Things got ugly mostly painstakingly
quietly seemingly Things got ugly beautifully
infrequently Things got ugly sadly especially
frequently unfortunately Things got ugly
increasingly obviously Things got ugly suddenly
embarrassingly forcefully Things got really ugly
regularly truly quickly Things got really incredibly
ugly Things will get less ugly inevitably hopefully. Ashley T455 3

4.5 An incredible poetry collection. One snippet from the poem “Taffeta”:

“I loved the feel of cloth folding around
my movement. That dress still hangs somewhere
waiting to be worn, its sheen & she-ness
shameless & sweat-stained. There’s a yearbook
photo to prove I wore it but it’s true
a photograph, especially when it’s an image
of flesh, grows, over time, more & more
strange. You are not you for long.
I am not trying to change the world,
I am trying to change myself
so that the world will seem changed.”

This is just a little sample of a collection that is inventive and reflective. I would very much recommend it! Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant874 37 Read

the brand new terrance & hey i'm. a big fan I it more than Lighthead ... lovely to see TH get warm with the sestina, that chunky menace. & treating it more or less as it was devised in medieval France, an algorithmic plug-in-and-play. George Floyd poem excellent. bob ross too? holy moly. you get the feeling midway thru a midway Terrance poem where you're wondering yr reaction if it was anybody else that'd written it,? magnum magnum Michael1,153 12

I’m very glad I read this collection of poems. The author always challenges me (in the best ways) to see the magic he is delivering in and through his poems. I’m grateful for each of them and for the insight, they offer to me about our nation, my soul, the wit and discernment around me in surprising places. Khepre263

Very introspective and retrospective collection of poetry that eloquently uses personification at times and allegories and visuals to highlight an excellent connection of poems that not only highlight living in America but living within itself. And how living within yourself highlights and perceive your worldview. Nancy1,180 18

Terrance reading "Bob Ross Paints Your Portrait" at Brooklyn Poets opened up a whole new portal to awe. (Including a Bob Ross documentary.) I love so much how Terrance experiments and plays hard. I didn't love every poem here but I don't even care. I want to be around this much smart no matter what.poetry Michelle McGrane333 12


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