Terrance Hayes is an award-winning contemporary poet from Columbia, South Carolina. He was a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. He was educated at Coker College where he studied painting and English and then received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He has taught all over the country and in southern Japan and is now the Distinguished Silver Professor of English at NYU.
Terrance Hayes is the author of Muscular Music, Hip Logic, Wind in a Box,and American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. He has contributed to numerous anthologies. His work has won many awards including the 2010 National Book Award for his book Lighthead.
In his poems Hayes considers themes of popular culture, race, music, and masculinity. In a 2013 interview with Lauren Russell for Hot Metal Bridge, Hayes stated,
“I’m chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people’s expectations. I think music is the primary model—how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I’m just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.”
This week, Take a Hike with Terrance Hayes.
Wind in a Box