American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Terrance Hayes · 2018
Seventy sonnets written in the wake of 2016. Hayes reinvents the form with rage, wit, music, and formal brilliance.
The case against
Seventy poems, one title, one form, written fast and published fast. The hit rate is real but uneven; Hayes's pun engine sometimes spins through a sonnet without landing anywhere, and the sameness of the frame means the weaker entries read as outtakes from the stronger ones. A book wired to its political moment, which is both its charge and its expiration date.
Poetry · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
