July 25, 2018
“the little song pulsing”: An Interview with Oliver de la Paz
[Continued from “Scaffolding”] * When I read Oliver de la Paz’s poem “Diaspora Sonnet 25,” which the Academy of American Poets featured as its Poem-a-Day selection earlier this month, I […]
May 28, 2018
Age of Glass
[Continued from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin] Oh, the delight, when, after thinking about American sonnets for some weeks here at the Kenyon Review blog, the Cleveland […]
May 1, 2018
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XIX: The Pure Products of America)”] Now that I have my hands on the whole of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes, […]
March 24, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XVII: An American Sonnet by Any Other Name)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XVI: ‘What’s up ahead / which is resistance’)”] In the “Brief Glossary of Forms and Other Terms” at the end of David Lehman’s Ecstatic Occasions, […]
February 19, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XVI: “what’s up ahead / which is resistance”)
[Continued from: “American Sonnets (Part XV: Some Sonnets)”] Ashbery’s second book The Tennis Court Oath, published in 1962, contained “Two Sonnets” too—directly after “America” and a few poems removed from “‘They Dream […]
February 12, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XIV: Stein’s Sonnet)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XIII: The Hinges)”] In my last post, I thought a bit about how Gertrude Stein first opened up (or rather, unhinged) some of the doors […]
February 2, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XIII: The Hinges)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XII: Precursors)”] Terrance Hayes connects with Harryette Mullen connects with Gertrude Stein connects with Terrance Hayes. The links (hyper- and literary) above aren’t just from […]
January 27, 2018
American Sonnets (Part XII: Precursors)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part XI: Insistence)”] Terrance Hayes ended a 2006 post for Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog, by writing that “it is possible to value two very different things at […]
January 16, 2018
American Sonnets (Part X: Box, Box, Boxes, Boxes In)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part IX: Concept and Impact)”] I’ve been pulled in two directions in my reading and thinking in the past few weeks. I’ve been writing posts inspired […]
December 7, 2017
American Sonnets (Part VI: Hayes In His Own Words)
[Continued from “American Sonnets (Part V: Hayes In His Own Words)”] Terrance Hayes’s conversation with Rachel Zucker, discussed in my previous post, is certainly not the only conversation in which […]
October 30, 2017
Hayes’s American Sonnets (Part III: Hayes and The Confidence of Influence)
[Continued from “Hayes’s American Sonnets (Part II)”] While my intention in my last post was simply to begin to connect Wanda Coleman’s “American Sonnets” with Terrance Hayes’s “American Sonnets for […]
October 25, 2017
Hayes’s American Sonnets (Part II)
[Continued from “Hayes’s American Sonnets (Part I)”] I trace Hayes’s “American Sonnet” impulse and form to Wanda Coleman, but Coleman and Hayes are certainly not alone in making the sonnet […]