{"product_id":"watch-your-language-isbn-9780143137733","title":"Watch Your Language","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Dazzling . . . a verbal and visual feast that defies genres.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Hayes [is] \u003c\/b\u003eone of the best and most important poets now writing.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, \u003ci\u003ePoetry\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the National Book Award–winning author of \u003ci\u003eLighthead\u003c\/i\u003e, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, \u003ci\u003eSo to Speak\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCanonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in \u003ci\u003ePlaying in the Dark\u003c\/i\u003e (\"I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography\"), \u003ci\u003eWatch Your Language\u003c\/i\u003e charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry. Illustrated micro-essays, graphic book reviews, biographical prose poems, and nonfiction sketches make reading an imaginative and critical act of watching your language. Hayes has made a kind of poetic guidebook with more questions than answers. \"If you don't see suffering's potential as art, will it remain suffering?\" he asks in one of the lively mock poetry exam questions of this musing, mercurial collection. Hayes's astonishing drawings and essays literally and figuratively map the acclaimed poet's routes, roots, and wanderings through the landscape of contemporary poetry.\u003cb\u003e\u003cu\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eWatch Your Language\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A dazzling homage . . . [\u003ci\u003eWatch Your Language \u003c\/i\u003eis] a verbal and visual feast that defies genres . . . exhilerating . . . Time and time again, [Hayes] introduces a phrase or form that appears familiar, then radically reinvents it. The results are strange, sometimes surreal and always sublimely surprising . . . [He] continues to devise language well worth watching.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One reads a book like Hayes’s to feel at home in a strange land, to feel one’s enthusiasm answered and challenged, to soothe one’s uncertainty, and to excite it, in order to get more \u003ci\u003einto\u003c\/i\u003e poetry . . . I get giddy imagining the view if this were the first panoramic glimpse teenagers got of the poetry landscape . . . I don’t think there’s ever been a book like this before. A young Black poet reading this book will see the poetic tradition—the past, as well as the present—as it really is, not one tradition at all, but many, carried forward by many kinds of people who are connected not just by scholars’ analyses, but by community . . . they will feel \u003ci\u003einvited\u003c\/i\u003e to poetry, and by no less a host than Terrance Hayes, one of the best and most important poets now writing.” —Craig Morgan Teicher, \u003ci\u003ePoetry \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A wildly entertaining and honest view into a poet and artist’s rangy mind.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“When one of America’s great poets assembles his poetic origin story in a collage-like collection of mini essays, illustrations, prose fragments, and assorted feuilletons of a life in poetry, it behooves us all to pay attention. In examining his own path to poetry, Terrance Hayes also manages to excavate a century of nearly forgotten African American poets, reminding us all of the very narrow poetic canon that predominates to this day in the academy. Essential reading.” —\u003ci\u003eLitHub\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A freewheeling work of creative originality . . . Equal parts zine, poetic bibliography, and interior atlas to Hayes' literary inheritance, this imaginative undertaking will intrigue aficionados of the author's expanding oeuvre and anyone looking for artistic inspiration.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eTerrance Hayes\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eLighthead\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of   the 2010 National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics   Circle Award. His other poetry collections are \u003ci\u003eAmerican Sonnets for My   Past and Future Assassin\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHow to Be Drawn\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWind in a Box\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eHip   Logic\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eMuscular Music\u003c\/i\u003e, and he is also the author of \u003ci\u003eTo   Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and   Work of Etheridge Knight\u003c\/i\u003e, which was a finalist for the National Book   Critics Circle Award for criticism. His honors include a National Endowment   for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 MacArthur   Fellowship. Hayes lives   in New York City, where he is a professor of creative writing at New York University.","brand":"Penguin Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300368666853,"sku":"NP9780143137733","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780143137733.jpg?v=1767743626","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/watch-your-language-isbn-9780143137733","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}