Watch Your Language
Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
“Dazzling . . . a verbal and visual feast that defies genres.” —The Washington Post
“Hayes [is] one of the best and most important poets now writing.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, Poetry
From the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak
Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography…
$27.99
July 18, 2023Terrance Hayes is the author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, winner of the 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award. His other poetry collections are So to Speak, How to Be Drawn, Wind in a Box, Hip Logic, and Muscular Music. He is also the author of To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight, winner of the 2019 Poetry Foundation Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. Hayes lives in New York City, where he is a professor of creative writing…