Getting into Poetry: Terrance Hayes

By Rose Lindsey

Welcome into another Getting Into Poetry, a section where we’ll be exploring a poem, learning about its author, and exploring its language and form to uncover new ways to approach and think about poetry. This month, in honor of Juneteenth, we’ll be looking at the contemporary poet Terrance Hayes and his work with the form known as the American sonnet. 

Terrance Hayes was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and later completed his BA at Coker College and his MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. He became a teacher in Ohio, Louisiana, and even Japan, before later serving as a professor at New York University, and as the New York Times editor of poetry between 2017 and 2018. He has published a total of seven poetry collections, including So to Speak – which was released just last year! For this section, we’ll be examining a piece from his 2018 body of work, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. To do this, we must first uncover what an American sonnet is. 

You might be familiar with the sonnet as a form. Traditionally 14 lines long, with a specific rhyme scheme – ABABCDCDEFEFGG is its most famous construction, though other rhyme schemes exist. Sonnets also hold themselves to following iambic pentameter, the stressed-unstressed meter that purports to emulate the feeling of the heart beating. The structure tends to consider this structure: the first two quatrains, or portions of four lines, explore something conceptually, usually love. The third quatrain adds some level of complication to this matter: is love really so wonderful as the poet envisioned? Your final two lines, the ending couplet, is identified as the volta, an indication that the poet’s mind is settled, and something has changed: perhaps love has its complications, but it will vex the poet regardless. Sonnets are commonly viewed as remarkably European and high-brow in contemporary society; nobody is known for their sonnets more than William Shakespeare. 

Unlike many other poetry forms, the American sonnet is not defined precisely by certain rules of line counts, rhyme scheme, or syllabic content. This is intentional, by design. The form first arose as what is essentially a political poetry move. Headed by Black American poets, the idea was that this Eurocentric form of creating poems could not truly speak to the conditions of being Black in America. It was another system of white straightening imposed onto Black poets – assimilation into the form would mean assimilation into the poetic aesthetics of the dominant culture. A number of Black poets thus took it upon themselves to experiment, play with, and ultimately recraft the sonnet into something that could accurately reflect their experiences. One of the forerunners of the American sonnet, and a poet I could give strong recommendation for, is Wanda Coleman, who wrote towards being a poor Black woman in L.A. Terrance Hayes has identified her as a primary inspiration for his American sonnet collection. 

The majority of the sonnets in American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin are identified by the same title: American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin. For better clarity, we’ll be examining his poem beginning with “I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison”. 

What I find very memorable about this poem is its presentation in relation to form. Here the poet is explicitly saying that the reader is locked into an American sonnet – forcing us to bring even more attention to form. Notice how the form itself follows a 14-line structure, but a standard rhyme scheme is not utilized, nor is iambic pentameter measured out. The closest we see is a refrain of “crow” as the final word of lines 7 and 9, which are two lines that would not rhyme in standard sonnets regardless. 

In consideration of the poem’s title, the question might be raised as to who the “past and future assassin” is. Terrance Hayes has identified this assassin as racial violence, which has served as an oppressive force through his past and will continue to exist into his future. Hayes has also made mention that much of this collection was reactive to the election of Donald Trump, and the incentivized hatred he witnessed permeating throughout the country. This context can help us to understand some of the ideas and word relations at work in this poem. 

Last month, I spoke to ways in which a form performs the content, the concept being that interplay between the way the poem is structured and the way the words are written can illuminate new ways of thinking about the work. For this piece, I want to draw attention to line 2, where the poet identifies this poem as “a little room in a house set aflame.” In considering where form performs content, this language works when we consider this piece as a piece in a larger collection. This one singular poem is the “little room” in a “house set aflame” – the entire collection of poems. The language utilized is especially effective due to the ways in which burning, both of property and of bodies, has been used as a historical violence against Black people in America. Hayes is conceptualizing this poem as one of several that are in response to violence, and he wants to ensure that the reader is placed fully within it. 

One of the defining elements of its poem is its wordplay, most extensively with the image introduced in line 7: “gym & crow”. This is, of course, a twist on the phrase Jim Crow, the series of laws which legalized racial segregation in the United States. Oftentimes, sonnets will utilize a particular image and metaphorical relation to elicit its message, such as a flower or a fruit to romantic love. Here, Hayes does this same, but he focuses on images and metaphors that connect entirely to his experience of being Black in America. This line also further ensnares the reader into becoming a subject of the poem. No longer are they just “locked” into the poem; now Hayes “makes” them the gym and the crow. The images that follow utilize these metaphorical images effectively – the stars falling at pep rallies is an especially powerful image when considering the U.S. flag or, more chillingly, the Confederate flag. 

The last element I want to bring attention to in this poem is line 13, where Hayes clearly delineates the volta of this poem, and of his other poems. This is another strong move to call attention to the poem’s intentional form, in a poem that has already demanded you follow its form throughout. The idea of what this volta is, “acoustics, instinct & metaphor”, gestures towards his intentions with all of his American sonnets: to pull forward his instinctual writing, in a way that resonates musically for himself, finds an acoustic quality that echoes. Consider the enjambment at the end of this line, though. When the line reads “Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough”, it raises an unsettling question that perhaps these voltas, and by extension these poems, are not enough. The sonnets are addressed to his past and future assassin, the racial violence that permeates throughout the everyday. How much can these sonnets do to counter or otherwise affect this reality? Hays is likely asking himself this question as he writes – but he does not cease writing. Indeed, even with the “house set aflame”, he continues to find rooms within it to lock his readers into. 

I hope this analysis has given you new insights into a poet and his craft, and you found other moments or elements that struck you while reading the poem. Terrance Hayes is a powerful poet, and he is just one of many Black American poets who have explored the American sonnet. I encourage you, today and every day that follows, to explore the form further. I would also encourage you to consider other ways that poetic forms can be modified, changed, or countered to find personal expression that the dominant culture would not accept so readily. How can poetry serve as a vessel for personal story and political change?