Reading “Our sermon today concerns the dialectic” by Terrance Hayes

Poetry Lunch S4E9

Reading “Our sermon today concerns the dialectic” by Terrance Hayes from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Penguin Books.

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In deep conversation with this one! one of the stills from this video makes me think of my gramma and how directly she would talk to a text — clearly I do too.

I love how tight and smooth and strong these sonnets are, while managing to be so grounded, and reach wildly high, and break off lines in masterful opening-up inviting-in kinds of ways. I feel I could read Terrance’s poems every day and get something new, or deeper, daily. Which I think is the point. These poems are about everything each time, through a specific lens or another but always expanding to consider the whole, bursting at their seams and threatening ever more expansion. Or offering? That too.

Grateful to Seattle Arts & Lectures for turning my attention to Terrance’s work, excited to get to see him live in Seattle on May 2, 2024!

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Link to purchase

Get the book: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin.