About this item
A powerful, timely, dazzling new collection of poems from Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of Lighthead - to be published simultaneously with his latest work of literary criticism, Watch Your Language The three sections of Terrance Hayes' seventh collection explore how we see ourselves and our world, mapping the strange and lyrical grammar of thinking and feeling. In "Watch Your Mouth," a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds; in "Watch Your Step: The Kafka Virus," a talking cat tells jokes in the Jim Crow South; in "Watch Your Head," green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne, and Bob Ross paints your portrait. On the one hand, these fabulous fables, American sonnets, quarantine quatrains, and ekphrastic do-it-yourself sestinas animate what Toni Morrison called "the writerly imagination of a black author who is at some level always conscious of representing one's own race.
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.
