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Terrance Hayes Quotes

Ask a glass of water why it pities the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.

Ask a glass of water why it pities the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.

Terrance Hayes
Dog, Rain, Glasses
Terrance Hayes (2010). “Lighthead”, p.14, Penguin

I'm chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people's expectations. I think music is the primary model-how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I'm just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.

Terrance Hayes
Thinking, People, Expectations

Look, the world is everywhere: satellites, end tables, the pink and white poinsettias outside the church; reunions and degrees. All those radiant asterisks . . . Soon it will all make sense.

Terrance Hayes
White, Church, Degrees
Terrance Hayes (2006). “Wind in a Box”, p.32, Penguin

Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.

Terrance Hayes
Beautiful, Book, Compassion

In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera’s work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day.

Terrance Hayes
Flower, Book, Biblical

One of Still Lifes many achievements is its paradoxical mix of intensity and stillness. Alexander Longs visions of landscape, identity and "History itself, a joke that no one gets" are simultaneously meditative and alert, restless and focused. This is a smart, compassionate poet. Still Life is a mesmerizing new book.

Terrance Hayes
Smart, Book, Achievement

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