About this item
Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for PoetryIn his fourth collection, Terrance Hayes investigates how we construct experience. With one foot firmly grounded in the everyday and the other hovering in the air, his poems braid dream and reality into a poetry that is both dark and buoyant. Cultural icons as diverse as Fela Kuti, Harriet Tubman, and Wallace Stevens appear with meditations on desire and history. We see Hayes testing the line between story and song in a series of stunning poems inspired by the Pecha Kucha, a Japanese presentation format. This innovative collection presents the light- headedness of a mind trying to pull against gravity and time. Fueled by an imagination that enlightens, delights, and ignites, Lighthead leaves us illuminated and scorched.
About the Author
Terrance Hayes (terrancehayes.com) was born in South Carolina in 1971. His most recent book is How to Be Drawn (Penguin 2015) . Lighthead, his fourth poetry collection, won the 2010 National Book Award. His third collection, Wind in a Box (Penguin 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, seven Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. He is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
