You are beautiful because of your sadness, but you would be more beautiful without your fear. Should I mirror the rhythm of her hips,Or should I take the lead? In the Ramos case, three dissenting justices were concerned that states could face a potential tsunami of litigation if all active cases with nonunanimous jury convictions were invalidated. Every time I tried to bring it up with my friends, they were like, Man, what are you talking about? I didnt expect everyone to want to talk to me about it. Im someone who wants to experiment and play and see what happens, because itll be new no matter what it is, which is probably why I cant write a novel. These crisis conditions suit Hayes. This makes the work morally ambiguous in ways some readers will resist: I suspect that not everybody will recognize blackness as any part, even a rejected part, of Trump, a man whose loathing of black people seems unabashed. The Criminal Justice Reform Clinic gathered racial data from public records on the group of people who have filed relief petitions asking for the Supreme Court ruling to apply to them as of late January. Im a student of poetry, and I feel like everythings on the table, and I can use it all. the afternoon came evening's bell. JW: Where would you place your work? So whats useful about the Allen Grossman line is to say, what is the puzzle about? Born in 1971 in Columbia, SC, Hayes's mother was a corrections officer and father a military barber. Ishion Hutchinson, Post-Postcolonial Poet. So suddenly, it's as if he himself is the assassin. In his five books, he has perfected a sort of poem where wild jams carom inside arbitrary formal boundaries. My interest is not what people expect from me as a poet; I know I can make burgers, but can I make sushi? While resolution of any case that might come before the Oregon Supreme Court could take years until appeals are exhausted, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case in December on past convictions, but a ruling isnt expected until at least July. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. Im always torn between the dilemma of saying there has to be something worthwhile to someone other than myself, even though I can get pretty far just eating what I make for myself and having no one else at the table. I was just doing a Q and A and bouncing between The Simpsons and Picasso. Allen Grossman said, when people ask, What are your poems about? he says, Poetry, the subject is always poetry. I find that to be very useful as a maker of poems, even though thats frustrating for readers. Define life. His office only handles the post-conviction relief cases when the individual is not in custody nor on post-prison supervision currently only four people. Some of the older teachers crowd in the doorway like befuddled geese. I also thought, if it didnt work, I could just go back home and get a job there. Especially in poetry, although the joys are when its not poetry. Because Oregon is 76% white and 2% Black, according to U.S. Census figures, critics say its rare to see more than one or two black jurors assigned to any jury. JW: And the decision is how big the table is. States are allowed to use their own retroactivity test, and we do not know whether Oregon will follow the federal standard or come up with its own state test, Kaplan said. You have to be adaptable. The following interview appears in the Spring 2018 issue of The Iowa Review. Terrance Hayes is probably the most innovative poet addressing the complexities of race in America today. I would say, first, thats who I am. But Im still trying to get people to the table. Ive realized that my students definitely need to be praised and encouraged, but my method goes back, again, to the way I write my own poems. Every time Im flying out of Pittsburgh, I see your picture in the airport, with Pitt advertising, Come study with a genius. How do you feel about your position? [6] His second collection, Hip Logic (2002), won the National Poetry Series, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. by. Its in Lighthead, and that poem is in conversation with The Same City, about meeting this man who is my father, where he says to me, God made nothing sweeter than pussy. The growth of the poems is very local, and when they become confessional, its because Im trying to become someone better from one day to the next, or come to terms with the ways I cant be better from one day to the next. In the most general sense, my deepest ambitions are for the poem as a puzzle, as an object, as a Rubiks cube to play with. I understand that people around me think that my involvement in a new center will be a good thing, but I say, Well, how does a MacArthur make me a better poet?. But does that mean Im only making black-eyed peas and collard greens? TH: Me too, because theres too much affect in the fiction. In his quiet Southeast Portland townhouse, Jackson said he can walk outside and hear the birds and the woodpeckers. In his poems, in which he occasionally invents formal constraints, Hayes considers themes of popular culture, race, music, and masculinity. And I thought, after Id written it, Well, if I dont go out there and find this dude whos my biological father, Im going to keep writing this poem. So thats a personal thing from my life, and if I didnt answer that life question, I felt like I was going to be stuck in my work. Critics argued these laws are a relic from a racist past that marginalize minority jurors. The defendant can claim a constitutional violation occurred during the trial in this case, Jackson and his attorney would argue Ramos applies to him, which could grant him a retrial. The case, Edwards v. Vannoy, argued Dec. 2, centers on Louisiana man Thedrick Edwards, who was convicted by a nonunanimous jury of several counts of armed robbery, attempted armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated rape. I did help start the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, which is important in archiving poetry, but most of my concerns, over eighty percent, go toward teaching. [7] He won the National Book Award for Lighthead[1] (in which he invented the "golden shovel" poetic form). So for someone to say this is your audience and you have to give people the thing theyll really eat, Im saying you dont know what peoples capacity is. When Id go home, all they said was, Why are you still going to school? And I would say, Youre not paying for it. Most of the time, I was going to leave. The thing that limits people sometimes is that, at a certain age, they start to say, This is what I do.. As a poet, you know your limitations, and those limitations are the form of the person or the poet. JW: I want to come back to how you reflect upon your own success, but first I want to ask about your relation to art. Then I stood them up, and I had a grid of images. They love their grandpop, Jackson said. She could choose to let those peoples cases through and let them start over and get a fair trial, Kaplan said. (Courtesy of Lynn James-Jackson), POST-CONVICTION RELIEF: CHANCE FOR RETRIAL. How does that bear on your poetry? As he remarks in this interview, he resists being tied to one adjective to describe himself as a poet. Some of them want that, but they dont know what it looks like or know enough about the template for becoming a successful writer, so they wind up writing really interesting things all the time. Ive always tried to stay very focused in terms of what I need to write. Another U.S. Supreme Court case, however, could address it sooner. Hes still on post-prison supervision. Everybody assumes that the I is a confessional I, and they assume that with me, but I find its a useful device so I can lie to people in plain sight. Hayes's first book of poetry, Muscular Music (1999), won both a Whiting Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. You cantGrasp your own hustle, your blackness, you cant graspYour own pussy, your black pussy dies for touch. I think thats a working-class outlook: if it didnt look like it was for me, if I felt in the workshop the way I felt in the barber shop, I could just go home and work. Or Toni Morrison. I like the texture of it, so the only way to get to that is to keep painting stuff and erasing it, and painting on top of it and struggling with it so the layers would be hidden. I knew that was my only course of action, Jackson said. But then there are the poems that are just about feelings and about family, and maybe you dont have to have a dictionary or internet next to you. They all had faces of oranges in them and a bunch of other stuff. "My Aesthetic Schizophrenia: An Interview with Terrence Hayes", Jonathan Moody, Audio: Terrance Hayes Reading for From the Fishouse, Library of Congress Online Catalog > Terrance Hayes, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terrance_Hayes&oldid=1111538819, Short description is different from Wikidata, Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 21 September 2022, at 14:09. For the known cases though, Rosenblum can ask the court to reverse the convictions and send them back to county district attorneys for retrial. TH: Yeah, a full ride. If I dont do something about this, then they still have to deal with all the stigmas that come with a father with a violent history, he said. To me, the conversation is done once I choose a side. I thought, Maybe Ill look at it in a little while. Thats about failure and practice. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. As of late February, the Oregon Attorney Generals office has conceded or partially conceded 340 of those cases. Its gonna be work, its gonna be a hobby, its gonna be something I love., jding@oregonian.com; 503-221-4395; @j_dingdingding. So why would I have to segregate them? I had another poem about my father working in the yard called The Earth God, and I worked on it for about two years. On the other side, a graduate student is so close to the professional world that they cant help but have those things influence them. TH: Flexibility is what makes a good program. You wont admit it. My sense is that the synthesis is what the university can do. Terrance Hayes, others to serve as interim editors of Pitt Poetry Series Thursday, January 13, 2022 The Pitt Poetry Series, which was created by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1967, is transitioning from the longtime editorship of Ed Ochester, who retired in October after more than four decades at the helm of the series. And yet I still feel like theres something wrong with trying to force me to support the troops. The best stuff still hasnt happened. Im not asking to get rid of Bach and Beethoven and only to listen to this knucklehead from Atlanta. You've got the music. My default answer to just about everything in the world is, Man, Im just going to go write a poem. When things get rough, whether its grading student papers or paying the bills or a fight with my wife, my default answer is to write a poem and just forget about all of it. Its so erotic! And then for the next year, I was working on a poem that was totally a Keats imitation. 2023 Cond Nast. of the ball and chain around . If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. You have the same judge that has the ability to rectify this offense particularly because this law is particularly steeped in racism, Hayes said. I could talk to myself in a room and come up with something, but I wouldnt want to only do only that. Some defendants were retried and convicted again, while others had charges dropped or were retried and released. Probably someone is prey in all of our encounters. He is known for his collections American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins and To Float In The Space Between. There are definitely 14 lines per poem, so that's that sonnet form that you may or may not remember from your 10th grade English class. Im not that interested in anything other than making something, playing with something, and it doesnt have to be anything other than poetry. Thats manifested in the pecha kucha poems in Lighthead: theyre not measurements of meter; theyre measurements of time. I was gonna fight it until I couldnt fight anymore.. Thats a nightmare for me. Terrance Hayes Reads American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin. Copyright 2018 NPR. The latter won the Poetry Foundation's 2019 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism. SHAPIRO: Tess Taylor sharing Terrance Hayes's new collection called "American Sonnets From My Past And Future Assassin." TH: What I think the university can do is bridge the things weve been discussing; it can bridge James Joyce and Future. You can insert anything in that but certainly fluidity in terms of faculty and aesthetics. Terrence Hayes (center), 37, is shown with his family in their Northeast Portland home on Friday, March 5, 2021. It was launched in February by Zealous, a national organization founded by prominent criminal justice advocate and attorney Scott Hechinger that pushes for more advocacy by public defenders. So I would hope that in my forties I would be different, more interesting, and know moreand probably be more ambivalentthan I was in my twenties. This is not the first time Rosenblum has stood in the way of striking down nonunanimous jury verdicts in Oregon. Its like James Joyce and Molly Bloom and a fifty-page sentenceJames Joyce really fucked some commas up. Everybody has their own weird thing, and mine is that I like books. My attitude is to split the difference. None of those were affected by the Ramos decision. . So I really could not afford to do the kind of art I wanted to do in graduate school. That is what I value in a workshop. Its not like you could move something out just because it happens to not look like you. How do you see that affecting creative writing programs? Activists want Rosenblum to act now, otherwise an answer could be months away. For decades, Oregon and Louisiana were the only states that allowed felony convictions by split jury votes. Terrance Hayes explicates, "If you subtract the minor losses,/you can return to your childhood too:/the blackboard chalked with crosses." The 'minor losses' signify Terrance's childhood, heartening innocence. I think a novelist has to be a strategist of sorts and think this is the general structure Im working out. That informs my teaching, too, and that could be a problem for an MFA student or a young poet who wants a strategy and says, Tell me how to become a successful writer. Id say, I believe in experimenting, and some experiments succeed, and some fail.. Because I wasnt in a class and didnt have to turn it in at the end of the week and revise it and turn it in again in a portfolio at the end of the semester, I could just work. They hope to provide resources for mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence and re-entry for formerly incarcerated people. I wrote them one at a time, and there are six, because a box has six sides. These adversaries, dreamed up in Hayess poems, are also confined there: I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison,/Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame., The conflict between flight and confinement is built into the form he has chosen. JW: And its also the table to come, which you cant quite predict, or you might be totally off if you do. You come from a small town in South Carolina and went to college because you had a basketball scholarship. YouTubes privacy policy is available here and YouTubes terms of service is available here. Even though I had not done that much poetry, it seemed cheaper. TAYLOR: Well, again, it's interesting in that poem that I just read where he says, assassin, you are a mystery to me, I say to my reflection sometimes. You told me another time that, when you were growing up, you didnt know if youd become a corrections officer like your mother or go into the military like your stepfather, but you came to poetry while you were in college. TH: Thats a great question. TH: I dont know how negative that is. It was a room of low-residency MFA people in Tampa, and I said, Half of you are going to get what I say about abstract expressionism, cubism, Rothko, and Picasso, and half of you are going to get The Simpsons, Lil Wayne, and Future, this new rapper. Why do I have to separate those out? I just want to be writing, and I dont care that much if you say you love it or you hate it. I also was in track and field. Thats the Stephen King end of things. This song cycles center on what it means to be a Black man living in America today. JW: I like the essays more than the fiction. Im mostly interested in philosophers that have an interest in languageWittgenstein, even Nietzsche. After Ive done a poem, then I can think about it as a piece of the puzzle and as a part of this whole thing, as opposed to writing one poem at a time, and when I get to twenty poems or forty poems, I have a book. That would be the Ashbery kind of poetry. So Ill risk naivety in the moment. TH: Most workshops are set up around strategy, but theyre not set up around failure. I think thats useful, but on the other hand, its not quite satisfying for me. His new work, Hip Logic, is full of poetic tributes to the likes of Paul Robeson, Big Bird, Balthus, and Mr. T, as well as poems based on the anagram principle of words within a word. Its twenty seconds for each stanza, and Im trying to create out of these twenty-second lyric bursts a narrative that holds together. JW: What was it like when you were in grad school? They must withstand humiliating sexual reviews to participate in the economy at all: There was black male review for ladies nightAt the nightclub. You find that out especially as a teacher. Why only Shakespeare, when theres this other stuff thats happening? For me, that wouldnt be enough. But I think it is my personality that I can pretty much go into any room where people speak English and navigate around that room in terms of engaging with what theyre doing. Its a great meal, and maybe youre a terrific eater, so they watch and wow, those noodles look delicious. JW: When you went to Coker College, you went for visual arts. The sonnet, an Italian contrivance adapted by the poets of the English Renaissance, was handed down to twentieth-century writers like Robert Lowell and Gwendolyn Brooks and self-consciously Americanizedits gait loosened, its politics sharpened. They sometimes say, Theres all this new work, and youre still trying to make us read these old white dudes from the canon. Last year at Yale, some students protested, saying, Why do we have to read all these white guys? Whether thats a black barbershop, or working as a temp in an office, or working in a warehouse, I always felt there was nobody in that space like me., Im not that interested in anything other than making something, playing with something, and it doesnt have to be anything other than poetry., On Choosing a New York I Didn't Think I Wanted. Thats what I find interesting, and to have that wall stops it. Who those people are, I dont really think too much about that. sort by. Whats important for me in that book is the joining of it, making this new object. TH: The thing that is always a challenge from one poem to the next is managing time. Its always what I go back to, and everything is filtered through that. Perhaps easier to fathom is the notion that Hayes has so internalized the threat of execution that he sees his assassin in the mirror. Its a petition that can be submitted in civil court even after someone has exhausted criminal court options. watch your mouth is little more. JW: There are more than four hundred creative writing programs in the United States. She cited the practical consequences of allowing hundreds, potentially thousands of past cases be retried. The Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association is on board. In basketball, I was fine. in the face the music of his wrist-. The order of those things shifts depending on where I am that day: some days, Im a male poet first, and thats whats really going to inform the work; a lot of days, Im a black poet first and thats whats going to inform it. Williams in late February moved to have convictions overturned for 22 people convicted of felonies by nonunanimous juries, and he has plans to review hundreds more. Youre a synthetic poet. The university space should be, ideally, a fluid space, but instead we often encounter people saying, This is at the top of the pyramid, and everything else is beneath it. I think that a good program values Language poets the same way they value Black Arts poets and confessional poets. Either youve been born into wealth, or youre down-and-out in the gutter, like Charles Bukowski, doing terrible jobs? TH: One thing that people say is that were creating robots, and students are just writing the same poems. Both of them were in the packet I sent to get into Pitt. The you, now & then of the last line is, I take it, the reader and also the assassin. I say to students that its fine to not know stuff, but you have to research everything. Maybe I can, but I need to try that. It frees me up to tell the truth. He was the type of professor whose house youd visit, and all my family had met him before he passed. 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