A new collection from the award winner who has become one of the most compelling new voices in American poetry. 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.
Wind in a Box (POETS, PENGUIN)
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this searching follow-up to the acclaimed Hip Logic, Hayes bluntly concludes that "everyone/ is a descendant of slaves" and, more tentatively, wonders "if outrunning your captors is not the real meaning of Race?" A series of "Blue" poems ("The Blue Bowie," "The Blue Terrance") considers 20th-century representations of race, culling wisdom and impressions from poet-activist Amiri Baraka, filmmaker and performer Melvin Van Peebles and even Dr. Seuss: "Blacks in one box. Blacks in two box/ Blacks on/ Blacks stacked in boxes stacked on boxes." Utilizing a range of forms and voices—Dante's terza rima, jerky blues in the spirit of Langston Hughes, Frostian lyrics, contemporary prose poems—Hayes brilliantly delivers the aeolian flux promised by the title: "a signature of wind,/ my type-written handwriting reconfiguring the past." (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Terrance Hayes was born in Columbia, South Carolina. Muscular Music was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Hip Logic was a winner of the National Poetry Series. A recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, Hayes teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Terrance Hayes was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1971. Lighthead, his most recent poetry collection, won the 2010 National Book Award. His third collection, Wind in a Box (Pengiuin 2006), was named one of the best 100 books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. His other books of poetry are Muscular Music (1999), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Hip Logic (2002), which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For the Blue Sequence, for the Borges, for the funk and the experimentation, for the hearbreaking narrative right beside the elliptical maneuvaring, for negotiating all styles to make a new style(s), for the appreciation of aesthetics that cross without crossing out any, this is my vote for best book of poems in 2006, and beyond.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By K. Harms
Format:Paperback
The above title is a quote from one of the six poems in the collection which share with collection's title. Haye's poetry is angry and blue. It's wild and yet contemplative, structured and yet abstract. Which means nothing in terms of a review, but he is possibly the strongest voice in American poetry today. His words are powerful and relentless. He is the future of American poetry and he's already arrived.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Ian Gazarek
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Hayes has something that I really like, something that's rare in modern poets: he has the ability to be both intelligent and playful at the same time. He combines a number of different modern poetry styles to create poems that are confusing, thrilling, interesting, sad, childish, and heartfelt all in the best of possible ways. I never found myself reading a poem I didn't like.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Experiments in sound...
This book of poetry tackles real situations and race issues through symbolic repetitions of nouns and verbs. Read more
Published 5 months ago by kingfisher1031
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, Unique
This poetry was modern, unique, insightful, absolutely brilliant. T.Hayes is spicy! I cannot say what was better - reading the poetry or simply looking at it!
Published on August 11, 2009 by B Hubler
4.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful poems
Hayes is a man of power. His poetry doesn't act upon flowery language or the use of a thesaurus. The power lies in the emotional restraint and outlet. Read more
Published on October 9, 2008 by Trash/Art
