What do you think?
Rate this book
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2018)In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered—the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.
96 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 19, 2018
233 people are currently reading
6827 people want to read
About the author
Terrance Hayes
59 books341 followersTerrance Hayes is the author of six poetry collections, including American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, How to Be Drawn, and Lighthead, which won the National Book Award. He is a MacArthur Fellow and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 588 reviews
March 10, 2018
Each of the 70 sonnets in this collection share the same title, which is an interesting conceit. The title becomes a refrain from one poem to the next. It is worth noting that all these poems were written after Trump's election, and they speak well to the current cultural moment as we grapple with race and racism, state sanctioned violence, a puppet president and trying to live our lives despite the contretemps. There are killer lines throughout but I keep coming back to the first lines of one of the sonnets--Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous/Darkness. Probably all my encounters/Are existential jambalaya.
June 27, 2018
OK, you have to start with the title here.
Even if you aren’t a poetry person, you have to be struck by it. It sounds as if it’s making sense even though it can’t be true at any literal level; you can’t have more than one assassin, but the grammar coheres. Then, in that verbal ambiguity, new possibilities arise: “assassin” is metaphorical, and “my” refers not just to one person but to many occupying the same position.
The book turns out to be an interrogation of those possibilities while also probing the nature of “sonnets.” It’s angry, thoughtful, committed to a project of self-betterment, and full of images and turns of phrase that do remarkable things, things like the title of the book which also serves (in the singular) as the title for each of the separate 50-or-so poems here.
I think there are a handful of these that work less well – a few are too gimmicky for my taste (“You don’t seem to want it” or “I cut myself on some glass”) and some seem a little too repetitive of the motifs that Hayes weaves throughout (like the “male hysteria” conceit”) – but even those tend to be redeemed by the cumulative power of the project. Many more are flat-out excellent while most of the “ordinary” ones are also effective and compelling. The result is that even those rare misfires function as part of a collection. In fact, I come eventually to wonder if they aren’t ultimately impressive as well, kind of like the squawks in a Coltrane solo – not so much errors as reminders of the technical brilliance it takes to pull off jazz at that level.
This is very much a jazz collection. The purist in me protested when I first realized these “sonnets” are neither metrical nor rhymed. I got over that complaint about 12 lines into the first one, though. Hayes has intuited the rhythm of the sonnet and then seen how far he can stretch it.
Here’s one example from my expanding list of great poems here:
Sometimes the father almost sees looking
At the son, how handsome he’d be if half
His own face was made of the woman he loved.
He almost sees in his boy’s face, an openness
Like a wound before it scars, who he was
Long before his name was lost, the trail
To his future on earth long before he arrived.
To be dead and alive at the same time.
A son finds his father handsome because
The son can almost see how he might
Become superb as the scar above a wound.
And because the son can see who he was
Long before he had a name, the trace of
His future on earth long before he arrived.
I’m struck by how that really is sonnet-like, not just in its layout but in its laying out of contrast. The first eight lines give us what I think is a gorgeous reflection on a father seeing a son and loving him for being shaped by the woman he loves, and then the final six reverse that, looking from the son to the father.
That’s enough to make me say wow, but Hayes is full of other excellent ones. Consider these lines from “From now on I will do my laundry early Sunday: “I believe/ Eurydice is actually the poet, not Orpheus. Her muse/ Has his back to her with his ear bent to his own heart./ As if what you learn making love to yourself matters/ More than what you learn when loving someone else.”
Or consider from “Our sermon today…”, “When the wound/ Is deep, the healing is heroic. Suffering and/ Ascendance require the same work. Our sermon/ Today sets the beauty of sin against the purity of dirt.” As with the book’s title, I am both bewildered by such language and drawn to it, drawn by its clarity of expression to find the ambiguity beneath it.
Or from “The subject is allowed…”, “What if it were possible to make a noise so lovely/ People would pay to hear it continuously for a century/ Or so. Unbelievably, Miles Davis and John Coltrane/ Standing within inches of each other didn’t explode.”
Or the first one, the one that convinced me to buy this and that points so forcefully to the nature of ambiguity at the center of the collection, “Orpheus was alone when he invented writing./ His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent/ His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it./ He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant/ I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.”
I’ve said all of that without touching on the political. I’ve heard this one referred to as one of the first great literary works to grapple with what the Trump moment means. That’s true in part since many of these address not just African-American history but also, implicitly, the Afro-pessimism that’s taking root in so much contemporary literature. One poem even seems to mention Trump by name – the not-as-effective-as-my-favorites “I pour a pinch of serious poison” – but I think, in the end, our current moment is incidental.
This is really what jazz has always been: an improvisation that insist a single moment can make sense of everything we imagine of both “before this moment” and “after.” This is angry and beautiful, and it speaks to poets and poems who’ve helped shape its voice, but it’s ultimately something like Coltrane at his best. It’s an artist spilling it all out and finding, against all odds, that it holds together.
Even if you aren’t a poetry person, you have to be struck by it. It sounds as if it’s making sense even though it can’t be true at any literal level; you can’t have more than one assassin, but the grammar coheres. Then, in that verbal ambiguity, new possibilities arise: “assassin” is metaphorical, and “my” refers not just to one person but to many occupying the same position.
The book turns out to be an interrogation of those possibilities while also probing the nature of “sonnets.” It’s angry, thoughtful, committed to a project of self-betterment, and full of images and turns of phrase that do remarkable things, things like the title of the book which also serves (in the singular) as the title for each of the separate 50-or-so poems here.
I think there are a handful of these that work less well – a few are too gimmicky for my taste (“You don’t seem to want it” or “I cut myself on some glass”) and some seem a little too repetitive of the motifs that Hayes weaves throughout (like the “male hysteria” conceit”) – but even those tend to be redeemed by the cumulative power of the project. Many more are flat-out excellent while most of the “ordinary” ones are also effective and compelling. The result is that even those rare misfires function as part of a collection. In fact, I come eventually to wonder if they aren’t ultimately impressive as well, kind of like the squawks in a Coltrane solo – not so much errors as reminders of the technical brilliance it takes to pull off jazz at that level.
This is very much a jazz collection. The purist in me protested when I first realized these “sonnets” are neither metrical nor rhymed. I got over that complaint about 12 lines into the first one, though. Hayes has intuited the rhythm of the sonnet and then seen how far he can stretch it.
Here’s one example from my expanding list of great poems here:
Sometimes the father almost sees looking
At the son, how handsome he’d be if half
His own face was made of the woman he loved.
He almost sees in his boy’s face, an openness
Like a wound before it scars, who he was
Long before his name was lost, the trail
To his future on earth long before he arrived.
To be dead and alive at the same time.
A son finds his father handsome because
The son can almost see how he might
Become superb as the scar above a wound.
And because the son can see who he was
Long before he had a name, the trace of
His future on earth long before he arrived.
I’m struck by how that really is sonnet-like, not just in its layout but in its laying out of contrast. The first eight lines give us what I think is a gorgeous reflection on a father seeing a son and loving him for being shaped by the woman he loves, and then the final six reverse that, looking from the son to the father.
That’s enough to make me say wow, but Hayes is full of other excellent ones. Consider these lines from “From now on I will do my laundry early Sunday: “I believe/ Eurydice is actually the poet, not Orpheus. Her muse/ Has his back to her with his ear bent to his own heart./ As if what you learn making love to yourself matters/ More than what you learn when loving someone else.”
Or consider from “Our sermon today…”, “When the wound/ Is deep, the healing is heroic. Suffering and/ Ascendance require the same work. Our sermon/ Today sets the beauty of sin against the purity of dirt.” As with the book’s title, I am both bewildered by such language and drawn to it, drawn by its clarity of expression to find the ambiguity beneath it.
Or from “The subject is allowed…”, “What if it were possible to make a noise so lovely/ People would pay to hear it continuously for a century/ Or so. Unbelievably, Miles Davis and John Coltrane/ Standing within inches of each other didn’t explode.”
Or the first one, the one that convinced me to buy this and that points so forcefully to the nature of ambiguity at the center of the collection, “Orpheus was alone when he invented writing./ His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent/ His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it./ He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant/ I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.”
I’ve said all of that without touching on the political. I’ve heard this one referred to as one of the first great literary works to grapple with what the Trump moment means. That’s true in part since many of these address not just African-American history but also, implicitly, the Afro-pessimism that’s taking root in so much contemporary literature. One poem even seems to mention Trump by name – the not-as-effective-as-my-favorites “I pour a pinch of serious poison” – but I think, in the end, our current moment is incidental.
This is really what jazz has always been: an improvisation that insist a single moment can make sense of everything we imagine of both “before this moment” and “after.” This is angry and beautiful, and it speaks to poets and poems who’ve helped shape its voice, but it’s ultimately something like Coltrane at his best. It’s an artist spilling it all out and finding, against all odds, that it holds together.
September 20, 2018
When I heard about the release of this American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, I knew I had to read it. I don’t often read poetry but when I do it’s because I’m sure the collection is going to move me. https://browngirlreading.com/2018/09/...
September 12, 2018
In any given year, there seems to be one poetry collection that everybody is abuzz about. This year, that "It" book is almost certainly Terrance Hayes's American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, a collection of 70 nontraditional fourteen-liners mainly focused on the subjects of race and racism in Trump-era America, livened by copious, jazzily irregular internal rhymes, wordplay, free association, a bounteous sense of humor, and a host of pop-culture references (Hayes seems as well-versed in -- and as passionate about -- the fantasy world of Doctor Who as he is about James Baldwin and Amiri Baraka). There's a winsome immediacy and down-to-earthness to the language: Hayes doesn't take himself overly seriously, talking about Nina Simone's greatness in one sentence and his own earwax in the next. The poems look backward by nodding to the time-tested sonnet form, yes, but they also look forward -- one poem speculating about the social media platforms of the future even winkingly contains a hyperlink.
In addition to race, gender is also a recurring theme. One poem, seemingly written in the #metoo climate, grapples honestly with what to make of the sexual harassment allegations against late poet Derek Walcott. Elsewhere, Hayes casually reflects that Sylvia Plath probably wasn't much fun to be around, being a "drama queen, thin-skinned / And skittery," but there is no malice or macho posturing to the observation. In another poem, Hayes muses on Emily Dickinson's sexuality, envisioning the genius poet "Whispering lonely dark lullabies to Death," but somehow the way he goes about it isn't creepy the way Billy Collins's "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" is, perhaps because the poems that surround this one tend to subvert traditional conceptions of masculinity:
Here are some quotes I underlined:
"my tongue
Which is like the head of a turtle wearing my skull for a shell"
"If you can
Give the world half what Nina Simone gave it,
You will have lived an exceptional life." (That line break after "If you can" is one of the best uses of a transformative line break that I have ever seen in my life)
"Assassin, you are a mystery
To me, I say to my reflection sometimes.
You are beautiful because of your sadness, but
You would be more beautiful without your fear."
And here are some quotes more explicitly about race in America:
"This country is mine as much as an orphan's house is his."
"I keep thinking
I'm confessing for the first time, the reason I fear you,
And you keep asking why I'm telling this old story again."
"In this we may be alike, Assassin, you & me: we believe
We want what's best for humanity."
A poem that begins "A remix of 'Pony' by Ginuwine plays...." is one of the most nuanced and interesting takes on the subject of cultural appropriation I've come across; a poem that begins "Sometimes the father almost sees looking / At the son, how handsome he'd be if half / His own face was made of the woman he loved...." is just a flat-out gorgeous, timeless sonnet, period.
In addition to race, gender is also a recurring theme. One poem, seemingly written in the #metoo climate, grapples honestly with what to make of the sexual harassment allegations against late poet Derek Walcott. Elsewhere, Hayes casually reflects that Sylvia Plath probably wasn't much fun to be around, being a "drama queen, thin-skinned / And skittery," but there is no malice or macho posturing to the observation. In another poem, Hayes muses on Emily Dickinson's sexuality, envisioning the genius poet "Whispering lonely dark lullabies to Death," but somehow the way he goes about it isn't creepy the way Billy Collins's "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" is, perhaps because the poems that surround this one tend to subvert traditional conceptions of masculinity:
my mother here she is the crazy bitch
In me she the way I weep she the way I break she manly
Manly Trumpeter I can’t speak for you but men like me
Who have never made love to a man will always be
Somewhere in the folds of our loving ashamed of it
Here are some quotes I underlined:
"my tongue
Which is like the head of a turtle wearing my skull for a shell"
"If you can
Give the world half what Nina Simone gave it,
You will have lived an exceptional life." (That line break after "If you can" is one of the best uses of a transformative line break that I have ever seen in my life)
"Assassin, you are a mystery
To me, I say to my reflection sometimes.
You are beautiful because of your sadness, but
You would be more beautiful without your fear."
And here are some quotes more explicitly about race in America:
"This country is mine as much as an orphan's house is his."
"I keep thinking
I'm confessing for the first time, the reason I fear you,
And you keep asking why I'm telling this old story again."
"In this we may be alike, Assassin, you & me: we believe
We want what's best for humanity."
A poem that begins "A remix of 'Pony' by Ginuwine plays...." is one of the most nuanced and interesting takes on the subject of cultural appropriation I've come across; a poem that begins "Sometimes the father almost sees looking / At the son, how handsome he'd be if half / His own face was made of the woman he loved...." is just a flat-out gorgeous, timeless sonnet, period.
January 30, 2019
I'm in two minds about this poetry output. There are some incredibly good poems in there, very powerful, creative, hard hitting. However, I find quite a few poems not meeting the same exacting standards and weaker in comparison. I like the flow, the ideas, the images (Dylanesque in some ways), but the syntax ends up looking samey. There seems to be an overuse of the same rhetorical tropes: obvious repetitions, lists, alliterations, connectors. I am sure this is all meant to be, but in my mind it flattens sentences out of their power instead of strengthening their core.
I would still recommend the read, some of the poems are unforgettable.
I would still recommend the read, some of the poems are unforgettable.
April 27, 2019
Review to come.
September 25, 2020
But there never was a black male hysteria
It has been a great fortune in the bleak year of 2020 to discover Morgan Parker, Audre Lorde and now Terrance Hayes. This collection is much more a thinking/associative project than either thos eof Morgan Parker or Jericho Brown. This is a pause and consider more than a palpable moment or ten second news clip. I was blindsided and especially in the sonnet form, it was a mesmerizing experience.
I make you both gym & crow here.
That is not glibness but a glance at how vanity and gossip obscure. Call me a believer and more of Mr. Hayes is in order.
It has been a great fortune in the bleak year of 2020 to discover Morgan Parker, Audre Lorde and now Terrance Hayes. This collection is much more a thinking/associative project than either thos eof Morgan Parker or Jericho Brown. This is a pause and consider more than a palpable moment or ten second news clip. I was blindsided and especially in the sonnet form, it was a mesmerizing experience.
I make you both gym & crow here.
That is not glibness but a glance at how vanity and gossip obscure. Call me a believer and more of Mr. Hayes is in order.
August 5, 2019
The Assassin walks among us. He's on the front page of the newspaper with some regularity. These 14-liners offer a healthy mix of Hayes' talent with sound devices and imagery with the political, gloves off and taking no prisoners.
I read it at the same time as Jericho Brown's The Tradition and included a sample poem from each book on my website. To read one or both, if you're interested in one or both, you can follow this yellow brick road.
I read it at the same time as Jericho Brown's The Tradition and included a sample poem from each book on my website. To read one or both, if you're interested in one or both, you can follow this yellow brick road.
July 1, 2019
Terrance Hayes is a very talented poet. This book has many outstanding poems with brilliant lines and insights. It is, like so many books of poetry I've read lately, a combination of commentary on racism in the United States and its personal impact on the poet as well as more purely personal poems. Hayes often makes use of established forms to contain his more experimental poems. Here he uses the very traditional form of the sonnet. His poems don't generally rhyme but some of them are like rap songs, with a quick tempo and filled with riffs on words.
I found this collection to be a little uneven in quality but with so many breathtaking poems or sections within poems that it is well worth reading.
I found this collection to be a little uneven in quality but with so many breathtaking poems or sections within poems that it is well worth reading.
September 20, 2018
From this year’s NBA longlist for poetry comes another great collection from Terrance Hayes. This collection is a series of sonnets looking at a culture that continues to allow racially-motivated killing of black Americans to occur. There is both an anger and a sadness evident in these poems, along with a defiance against accepting the status quo.
December 27, 2018
This is poetry about poetry and how to sing it.
It's about love as salvation.
It's about race, and it's about the anxious times we live in.
It's about how to dance out of the way of the assassins in our lives.
I think it's poetry that lives up to everything I'd heard about it.
It's impressive.
It's about love as salvation.
It's about race, and it's about the anxious times we live in.
It's about how to dance out of the way of the assassins in our lives.
I think it's poetry that lives up to everything I'd heard about it.
It's impressive.
Read
March 15, 2019I try to read some new poetry every year, and in the past couple of years have been blown away by work by Saeed Jones and Clint Smith. This covers some similar ground in terms of its exploration of race, sexuality, and masculinity in the contemporary US. But for me at least it didn’t have the same excitement and clarity. I don’t know if it was the sonnet form or the content (which was somewhat repetitive), or what. In any case, clearly these poems have spoken to many other readers.
November 12, 2024
We read this for book club; the choice was made in August, so at the time I had hoped that the collection's theme -- a response to Trump's first election -- would seem historical. Unfortunately it's extremely timely. Published in 2018, this collection was written by Hayes during 2016 and 2017, and looks at the racism and political landscape that led to Trump's rise to power. Hayes uses the "American sonnet" form, which was developed by Wanda Colman: it's a freer sonnet than the Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnet. The American sonnet uses wordplay and free association to develop its themes. Hayes is a virtuoso in this form, using language which feels free, playful and expansive, within a tight fourteen-lines. Although this collection used a lot of references that were, as an Irish reader, unfamiliar to me -- I had to look up everything from Betty Crocker to the Jim Crow laws -- Hayes's language and passion drew me straight in. I appreciated the specificity of his references and the exact way he evokes and signifies a particular cultural landscape. This is truly original and necessary collection, which reignited my belief in poetry and what it can achieve.
October 31, 2020
"Probably, ghosts are allergic to us. Our uproarious / Breathing & ruckus. Our eruptions, our disregard / For dust. Small worlds unwhirl in the corners of homes / After death" (22).
Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. I'm so glad this exists and can certainly appreciate the mastery involved in crafting these sonnets. They're almost encyclopedic in scope. I wasn't consistently drawn in, but the sonnets that do stand out are truly exceptional. I would have loved to read this in a class setting because I think I would grow more fond of the book through discussion.
Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. I'm so glad this exists and can certainly appreciate the mastery involved in crafting these sonnets. They're almost encyclopedic in scope. I wasn't consistently drawn in, but the sonnets that do stand out are truly exceptional. I would have loved to read this in a class setting because I think I would grow more fond of the book through discussion.
December 8, 2024
3.5
grounded in the present and even more relevant in anticipation of second presidency…
“Would you rather spend the rest of eternity with your wild wings bewildering a cage. Or with your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt.”
grounded in the present and even more relevant in anticipation of second presidency…
“Would you rather spend the rest of eternity with your wild wings bewildering a cage. Or with your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt.”
February 24, 2021
“I mean to leave a record of my raptures”
70 14-line poems, all with the same title, all in the same style. You would think it would get tedious. Well think again.
The poems in this collection are searing and silly and strange. Poetry can be so immediate and visceral when it’s personal. But that can mean not everyone will get it. I didn’t get some of these, but that’s okay. I’d rather read sharp lines I don’t understand than watered-down ones that I do. These poems made me wonder; made me envision new things.
I knew I was going to love these from the second poem that begins, “Inside me is a black-eyed animal,” with this image that keeps knocking around in my head:
“As if the clatter of a thousand black
Birds whipping in a storm could be held
In a shell.”
The poem beginning “Seven of the ten things I love in the face of James Baldwin” celebrates a worthy face indeed, but the details Hayes pulls out are extraordinary.
“The dimple in his chin
Narrows & expands like a pupil.”
There is just so much beautiful and surprising stuff here. Terrence Hayes will remind you of the awesome power of words.
“a silver tongue in the war we wage against death”
70 14-line poems, all with the same title, all in the same style. You would think it would get tedious. Well think again.
The poems in this collection are searing and silly and strange. Poetry can be so immediate and visceral when it’s personal. But that can mean not everyone will get it. I didn’t get some of these, but that’s okay. I’d rather read sharp lines I don’t understand than watered-down ones that I do. These poems made me wonder; made me envision new things.
I knew I was going to love these from the second poem that begins, “Inside me is a black-eyed animal,” with this image that keeps knocking around in my head:
“As if the clatter of a thousand black
Birds whipping in a storm could be held
In a shell.”
The poem beginning “Seven of the ten things I love in the face of James Baldwin” celebrates a worthy face indeed, but the details Hayes pulls out are extraordinary.
“The dimple in his chin
Narrows & expands like a pupil.”
There is just so much beautiful and surprising stuff here. Terrence Hayes will remind you of the awesome power of words.
“a silver tongue in the war we wage against death”
November 11, 2025
“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, part panic closet.”
my pleasant introduction to Terrance Hayes (written at the peak of his career). it reads like a fever dream written inside from the inside of a small locked room. i have historically not been particularly fond of the sonnet but for this particular collection, the oldest lyric form in English seems almost necessary to understand the feeling of the work. the constraint of the sonnet is often in this book a metaphor for the Black body constrained, surveilled, mythologized while being more than capable of tenderness and improvisation.
Hayes often avoids direct political statements (especially given the timeline of this work) e.g. in wordplay such as "gyms" and "crows". this is jazz, political-cultural scripture and self-aware stand-up comedy mashed up together. very pleasant read.
my pleasant introduction to Terrance Hayes (written at the peak of his career). it reads like a fever dream written inside from the inside of a small locked room. i have historically not been particularly fond of the sonnet but for this particular collection, the oldest lyric form in English seems almost necessary to understand the feeling of the work. the constraint of the sonnet is often in this book a metaphor for the Black body constrained, surveilled, mythologized while being more than capable of tenderness and improvisation.
Hayes often avoids direct political statements (especially given the timeline of this work) e.g. in wordplay such as "gyms" and "crows". this is jazz, political-cultural scripture and self-aware stand-up comedy mashed up together. very pleasant read.
April 25, 2019
4.5/5 Stars
Such an amazing concept and a clever, enthralling use of a poetic form that can often seem antiquated or irrelevant in a modern context. Each piece feels alive on the page, and the restrictions of the form somehow manage to make way for some incredibly provoking lines.
Such an amazing concept and a clever, enthralling use of a poetic form that can often seem antiquated or irrelevant in a modern context. Each piece feels alive on the page, and the restrictions of the form somehow manage to make way for some incredibly provoking lines.
July 7, 2020
I'm not sure why this collection didn't really work for me. I think if I were a well-read poetry appreciator I could better see how Hayes is working with the sonnet form. I liked a lot of the poems in general, there were a lot of striking lines. But I often found the phrasing difficult to understand or disliked some of the imagery. (Anything sexual in poetry generally leaves me cold, no matter the poet.)
January 7, 2022
This collection was nicely, tightly woven together. While it mainly addressed issues within certain years of the near past, many poems extended into thoughts on the past and future (of course) as well. Many of the poems also truly sing in an exploration of language as music.
“It’s not the bad people who are brave / I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.”
“It’s not the bad people who are brave / I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.”
October 21, 2024
god i love poets. i was locked into an american sonnet that was part prison part panic closet and somehow terrance hayes made me love every second of it
January 18, 2019
100% worth the hype. I'm glad to kick off my 2019 with this one.
Read
February 23, 2019Loved this.
October 18, 2024
I had my doubts about the same form keeping me engaged for 70 poems in a row, by wow that was not an issue at all.
March 19, 2021
I honestly can't say when I started reading this. I read a few poems each day or every few days.
I love Hayes and this book is a mix of brutal honesty, word play, politics, and joy.
I read a few of these poems in the New Yorker and I really like the project he has going in this book.
Highly recommend!
I love Hayes and this book is a mix of brutal honesty, word play, politics, and joy.
I read a few of these poems in the New Yorker and I really like the project he has going in this book.
Highly recommend!
December 31, 2018
Like the 14 song album that would be discernibly better if trimmed to 10 songs, this collection is flabby. The index of first lines reads like some of the weaker poems (I didn't know I had crossed over into the index). More of a 3.5 for me, great moments in here, but too many one draft poems, overly bardic turns ("deep"=Rilke/Neruda/Lorca reference), and lazy phonic riffs ("horror & hoorah" are similar sounding, so let's stack them). There's also a tendency to coast on some questionable semantic/philosophical questions [The orchid's/Mouth is the shade of pussy"]. I am not brave enough to tell anyone that pussy comes in one shade. The black male hysteria poems would be better served in a short chapbook, consolidating their power. Too many accolades and you run the risk of losing your perfect pitch. But the highs are high: "Unbelievably, Miles Davis & John Coltrane / Standing within inches of each other didn't explode". Great poet, but a stop gap collection.
July 10, 2019
I pondered on whether to give AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN by Terrance Hayes 4 stars or 5 stars. It is awesome, creative, pondering, sometimes sad, sometimes funny, political, deeply human, insightful (even inciteful, having been written during the first 200 days of the current US administration in DC). It was nominated for the 2018 National Book Award for poetry and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for the same year. I discovered it while looking for a book to meet Goodreads' "Around the Year in 52 Books" Group Challenge #41, "A book from the 2018 GR Choice Awards." All exceptional honors, tributes to the man's obvious excellence with words. But.
Because the definition for GR's ratings are based on how The Reader felt about the book - 4-stars defined as "really liked it" and 5-stars as "it was amazing" - then I had to hesitate. Surely Hayes' 70 poems were well beyond "really liked" for me. Sometimes my jaw just dropped at the beauty of his words, his metaphors, his images; how he wound our modern political, racial, misogynistic, anti-democracy government into a classical poetic form, with the rough texture of past images or events (slavery, George Wallace, MLK, and more) and the underlying painful truth that, yes, he very well might be "assassinated" some day because he is a Black man, a resister-persister poet who speaks his mind in verse - or simply because he IS a Black man who could happen to find himself innocently in the wrong place at the wrong time confronted by the wrong (murderous) people. Despite being written during those early days of the current federal administration in our country, it holds little (if anything) back.
Each of the 70 poems in the slim volume has the same title, always in capital letters: "AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN." I was hooked on the book with its first poem, in which Hayes disagrees with what "the black poet would love to say his century began / With... " Then he tells us, "...but actually / It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors, / Poetry whiners & winos falling from the ship bows, sunset / Bridges & windows..." He further says, "In a second I'll tell you how little / Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not / Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin skinned, / and skittery, she thought her poems were just ordinary..." That comment made me laugh at first, then sadden. And here's Hayes' thought-provoking follow-up to the afore-mentioned lines (which made me decide that this poem has to become a "prompt" for my women's writing group) - he asks this question: "What do you call a visionary who does not recognize / Her vision?..." I read this poem while sipping a chai latte in the Barnes & Noble café, a stack of potential book purchases in front of me - and its last lines (which I am not including in this review - check it out yourself!) clinched its sale for me over at least 5 or 6 other tomes!
So was I going to only allot 4 stars in this review? Nope. I thought about how 4 1/2 stars would've been nice, if doable (not), since my qualms were only about how I didn't "get" some of the deeper issues, not being familiar with many of the names in the American story he was obviously telling, one of "the Other American Stories" that many of our country's so-called leaders do not want to acknowledge as worthy of equal and human rights. And the thing about poetry is that you don't have to "get it" to appreciate its beauty and value. There's a tone to a well-written poem, a rhythm that makes one pay attention [yes, even in free verse!]. You can "look up" some of the words or names later on, if you like, but it's often best to mostly flow along with the words, trying to feel the writer's sorrow, joy, agony, anger, worries, whatever s/he is trying to express... which is why I have given Terrance Hayes' AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN a 5-star rating. Because 4-1/2 wasn't enough; because on the second reading I'd only be upping it to the full five! Because it IS amazing.
Because the definition for GR's ratings are based on how The Reader felt about the book - 4-stars defined as "really liked it" and 5-stars as "it was amazing" - then I had to hesitate. Surely Hayes' 70 poems were well beyond "really liked" for me. Sometimes my jaw just dropped at the beauty of his words, his metaphors, his images; how he wound our modern political, racial, misogynistic, anti-democracy government into a classical poetic form, with the rough texture of past images or events (slavery, George Wallace, MLK, and more) and the underlying painful truth that, yes, he very well might be "assassinated" some day because he is a Black man, a resister-persister poet who speaks his mind in verse - or simply because he IS a Black man who could happen to find himself innocently in the wrong place at the wrong time confronted by the wrong (murderous) people. Despite being written during those early days of the current federal administration in our country, it holds little (if anything) back.
Each of the 70 poems in the slim volume has the same title, always in capital letters: "AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN." I was hooked on the book with its first poem, in which Hayes disagrees with what "the black poet would love to say his century began / With... " Then he tells us, "...but actually / It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors, / Poetry whiners & winos falling from the ship bows, sunset / Bridges & windows..." He further says, "In a second I'll tell you how little / Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not / Especially fun company. A drama queen, thin skinned, / and skittery, she thought her poems were just ordinary..." That comment made me laugh at first, then sadden. And here's Hayes' thought-provoking follow-up to the afore-mentioned lines (which made me decide that this poem has to become a "prompt" for my women's writing group) - he asks this question: "What do you call a visionary who does not recognize / Her vision?..." I read this poem while sipping a chai latte in the Barnes & Noble café, a stack of potential book purchases in front of me - and its last lines (which I am not including in this review - check it out yourself!) clinched its sale for me over at least 5 or 6 other tomes!
So was I going to only allot 4 stars in this review? Nope. I thought about how 4 1/2 stars would've been nice, if doable (not), since my qualms were only about how I didn't "get" some of the deeper issues, not being familiar with many of the names in the American story he was obviously telling, one of "the Other American Stories" that many of our country's so-called leaders do not want to acknowledge as worthy of equal and human rights. And the thing about poetry is that you don't have to "get it" to appreciate its beauty and value. There's a tone to a well-written poem, a rhythm that makes one pay attention [yes, even in free verse!]. You can "look up" some of the words or names later on, if you like, but it's often best to mostly flow along with the words, trying to feel the writer's sorrow, joy, agony, anger, worries, whatever s/he is trying to express... which is why I have given Terrance Hayes' AMERICAN SONNETS FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN a 5-star rating. Because 4-1/2 wasn't enough; because on the second reading I'd only be upping it to the full five! Because it IS amazing.
January 2, 2020
Raw. Inventive. Playful. Vulnerable.
If we wrote sonnets to all our assassins, we might reform them in time to save ourselves. The problem with most assassins is that they so seldom self-identify. But you know they have to operate under certain systems/structures. Indeed, they are no more free than any other member of society. Their role is to kill you. I doubt they like poetry.
I had suspected that Hayes was doing some innovative work with the form of the sonnet, but this article explores that out more effectively than anything I have to add or was able to actually grasp (mine was more a gut feeling than any sort or analysis). But it's his language that is likely to grab you more than any structure (traditional or otherwise). I'll let him speak for himself... (see below for a few favorites or click this link to hear him read from this book).
------------------------------------------------
Note: Every poem in this collection is titled "American Sonnet for My Past & Future Assassin"
------------------------------------------------
Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous
Darkness. Probably all my encounters
Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,
A nigga can survive. Something happened
In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson
And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened
In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens
Almost everywhere in this country every day.
Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.
You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names
In graves. Probably twilight makes blackness
Darkness. And a gate. Probably the dark blue skin
Of a black man matches the dark blue skin
Of his son the way one twilight matches another.
------------------------------------------------
Something in the metaphor of the bow
Which is never close enough to see the arrow
Hit its mark. I remain a mystery to my father.
My father remains a mystery to me.
Christianity is a religion built around a father
Who does not rescue his son. It is the story
Of a s son whose father is a ghost. No one
Mentions Jesus' sister. Nothing is written
About her. She had no children, she was in her
Forties the first time she turned water into wine.
A late bloomer, she began a small wine business
And traveled all over the world selling the wine.
Her name was the name of the wine,
I don't recall the name of the wine.
------------------------------------------------
The song must be cultural, confessional, clear
But not obvious. It must be full of compassion
And crows bowing in a vulture's shadow.
The song must have six sides to it & a clamor
Of volts. The song must turn on the compass
Of language like a tangle of wire endowed
With feeling. The notes must tear & tear,
There must be a love for the minute & minute,
There must be a record of witness & daydream.
Where the heart is torn or feathered & tarred,
Where death is undone, time diminished,
The song must hold its own storm & drum,
And shed a noise so lovely it is sung at sunset
Weddings, baptisms & beheadings henceforth.
If we wrote sonnets to all our assassins, we might reform them in time to save ourselves. The problem with most assassins is that they so seldom self-identify. But you know they have to operate under certain systems/structures. Indeed, they are no more free than any other member of society. Their role is to kill you. I doubt they like poetry.
I had suspected that Hayes was doing some innovative work with the form of the sonnet, but this article explores that out more effectively than anything I have to add or was able to actually grasp (mine was more a gut feeling than any sort or analysis). But it's his language that is likely to grab you more than any structure (traditional or otherwise). I'll let him speak for himself... (see below for a few favorites or click this link to hear him read from this book).
------------------------------------------------
Note: Every poem in this collection is titled "American Sonnet for My Past & Future Assassin"
------------------------------------------------
Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous
Darkness. Probably all my encounters
Are existential jambalaya. Which is to say,
A nigga can survive. Something happened
In Sanford, something happened in Ferguson
And Brooklyn & Charleston, something happened
In Chicago & Cleveland & Baltimore & happens
Almost everywhere in this country every day.
Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters.
You won't admit it. The names alive are like the names
In graves. Probably twilight makes blackness
Darkness. And a gate. Probably the dark blue skin
Of a black man matches the dark blue skin
Of his son the way one twilight matches another.
------------------------------------------------
Something in the metaphor of the bow
Which is never close enough to see the arrow
Hit its mark. I remain a mystery to my father.
My father remains a mystery to me.
Christianity is a religion built around a father
Who does not rescue his son. It is the story
Of a s son whose father is a ghost. No one
Mentions Jesus' sister. Nothing is written
About her. She had no children, she was in her
Forties the first time she turned water into wine.
A late bloomer, she began a small wine business
And traveled all over the world selling the wine.
Her name was the name of the wine,
I don't recall the name of the wine.
------------------------------------------------
The song must be cultural, confessional, clear
But not obvious. It must be full of compassion
And crows bowing in a vulture's shadow.
The song must have six sides to it & a clamor
Of volts. The song must turn on the compass
Of language like a tangle of wire endowed
With feeling. The notes must tear & tear,
There must be a love for the minute & minute,
There must be a record of witness & daydream.
Where the heart is torn or feathered & tarred,
Where death is undone, time diminished,
The song must hold its own storm & drum,
And shed a noise so lovely it is sung at sunset
Weddings, baptisms & beheadings henceforth.
June 11, 2020
After reading this, can I tell you what an American sonnet is? No. Can I tell you that Terrance Hayes is a master of them? Yes.
Throughout American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, Hayes creates these little poem worlds. They often have a 1-2 gut punch at the end, driving me to loop back to the beginning and read it again. Sometimes I felt like the Assassin was whiteness, was the police, was me, was Hayes himself; I don't know. But the violence in these poems for me felt like they laid bare the violence inherited by Black people in the United States.
I didn't expect to love this as much as I did. It's a deceptively complex collection—the language of the sonnets strive to be simple and often are. This'll be a book I revisit.
Throughout American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, Hayes creates these little poem worlds. They often have a 1-2 gut punch at the end, driving me to loop back to the beginning and read it again. Sometimes I felt like the Assassin was whiteness, was the police, was me, was Hayes himself; I don't know. But the violence in these poems for me felt like they laid bare the violence inherited by Black people in the United States.
I didn't expect to love this as much as I did. It's a deceptively complex collection—the language of the sonnets strive to be simple and often are. This'll be a book I revisit.
July 5, 2018
Like many poetry readers, I've been anticipating this collection for a while. Written during the first several months of the Trump administration, these sonnets fall in conversation with each other because of their shared title, rhythms, and repeated phrases ("But there was never a black male hysteria") and they also encompass the whole thought catalog of reactions following the 2016 election. There is a line in every poem here that will cut you, but for all the anguish and despair, there's also a lot of strength and celebration. This is a brilliant collection that is urgent in its timeliness, but that will also hold up in the years to come.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 588 reviews