{"product_id":"american-sonnets-for-my-past-and-future-assassin-isbn-9780143133186","title":"American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin","description":"\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNamed a Best American Poetry Book of the 21st Century (So Far) by \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eLighthead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Sonnets that reckon with Donald Trump's America.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered—the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.“Hayes set himself the challenge of writing political poems in the guise of love poems.  Each one is distinct:  Some are sermons, some are swoons.  They are acrid with tear gas, and they unravel with desire . . . These poems play with different registers, but they return to lamentation, to annihilating grief for ‘all the black people I’m tired of losing,’ one narrator says.” \u003cb\u003e– Parul Sehgal, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A diary of survival during a period when black men are in constant danger . . . This is one of the deepest accounts I have read in poetry of what it feels like to have one’s body fetishized as an object but criminalized as a force.” \u003cb\u003e– Dan Chiasson, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The right poetry collection for right now . . . Hayes’ writing demonstrates a serious commitment to revising, extending, and advancing American poetry while recording, celebrating, and mourning black American life.  These aesthetic and intellectual preoccupations also charge \u003ci\u003eAmerican Sonnets\u003c\/i\u003e.” \u003cb\u003e–Walton Muyumba, \u003ci\u003eThe Los Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eAmerican Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin\u003c\/i\u003e is a gift in a fraught moment. These sonnets, existential, political, personal, retain a moral ferocity and urgency . . . Hayes’ inhabits the deeply troubling historical moment.  But these poems are timeless, by which I mean these sonnets annihilate any difference between past and future.\" \u003cb\u003e– Faraz Rizvi,\u003ci\u003e The Millions\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Hayes reinvigorates a classic form . . . [he] examines what it means to be an American, to belong, and how it feels to be haunted and hunted by violent racism . . . expect to be challenged on nearly every page.” \u003cb\u003e– Elizabeth Lund, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Overwhelming in every sense.  Overwhelming in its brilliance, yes, but also overwhelming in its pacing, its style . . . The book, despite its breadth and clever turns, is a confrontation . . . His poems are like the slow and steady picking of a lock, until the door handle clicks.” \u003cb\u003e– Hanif Abdurraqib, \u003ci\u003ePoets and Writers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You will find all of [Hayes's] signature pleasures and provocations in this new collection: dense lyricism, associative word play, the political, the interpersonal, explorations and interrogations of race and gender and sex and the body and violence and power and history and time.\" \u003cb\u003e– \u003ci\u003eKenyon Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A wild work, effervescent and despondent, Hayes’s collection of sonnets reminds us that the mastery of time is one of poetry’s important functions, though sonnets only buy it back in hasty fourteen-line bursts.” \u003cb\u003e– Dan Chiasson, \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker, \u003c\/i\u003e\"The Poetry I was Grateful for in 2018\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Hayes] speaks with urgency and authority, bearing witness to the absurdities and cruelties of the present moment . . . [\u003ci\u003eAmerican Sonnets\u003c\/i\u003e] doesn’t just combine style and substance; style becomes substance . . . These poems reminded me what poetry is capable of: of being revelatory and inscrutable all at once, of speaking truth to power—but speaking it slant.” \u003cb\u003e—Tara McEvoy, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Pain and poignancy collide in this collection of seventy sonnets . . . perhaps the takeaway of Mr. Hayes’ work here is that what lies in between is heart – a pounding of poems that stays in the chest long after the pages are set down. These poems stay with me, they linger, they poke and ask questions, and this is the book’s success.  What more can one ask from poetry?”\u003cb\u003e – Cameron Barnett, \u003ci\u003eThe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hayes addresses this marvelous series of 70 free-verse sonnets to his potential assassin: a nameless, faceless embodiment of America’s penchant for racially motivated violence. The poems are redolent of his signature rhythmic artistry and wordplay . . . Inventive as ever, Hayes confronts America’s myriad ills with unflinching candor, while leaving space for love, humor, and hope.” \u003cb\u003e– \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“With this incomparable collection, Hayes  joins others in taking on the sonnet, reinvigorating its form and reimagining the possibilities of American literature.” \u003cb\u003e– \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eTerrance Hayes is the author of\u003ci\u003e Lighthead,\u003c\/i\u003e winner of the 2010 National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are \u003ci\u003eWind In a Box, Hip Logic\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMuscular Music\u003c\/i\u003e. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. \u003ci\u003eHow To Be Drawn\u003c\/i\u003e, his most recent collection of poems, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and received the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry.\u003cb\u003eAMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes the father almost sees looking\u003cbr\u003eAt the son, how handsome he'd be if half\u003cbr\u003eHis own face was made of the woman he loved.\u003cbr\u003eHe almost sees in his boy's face, an openness\u003cbr\u003eLike a wound before it scars, who he was\u003cbr\u003eLong before his name was lost, the trail\u003cbr\u003eTo his future on earth long before he arrived.\u003cbr\u003eTo be dead \u0026amp; alive at the same time.\u003cbr\u003eA son finds his father handsome because\u003cbr\u003eThe son can almost see how he might\u003cbr\u003eBecome superb as the scar above a wound.\u003cbr\u003eAnd because the son can see who he was\u003cbr\u003eLong before he had a name, the trace of\u003cbr\u003eHis future on earth long before he arrived.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301294952677,"sku":"NP9780143133186","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143133186.jpg?v=1767721442","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/american-sonnets-for-my-past-and-future-assassin-isbn-9780143133186","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}