![]() ![]() Hayes channels ghosts in both literal and figurative, direct and indirect, meta and intertextual levels often, Hayes’s ghosts work on all planes simultaneously. Each poem bears the same name-“American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin-and through this recurring title and form, Hayes’s poems immediately challenge their reader: “How do you even begin to write love poems to your once and future killer?”Īdditionally, once you are killed, what do you become? Ghosts are a recurrent motif in American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin. In the collection’s entirety, however, he abandons rhyme, opting instead for free verse. Here, Hayes mostly conforms, writing each sonnet with fourteen lines and many with identifiable turns. The sonnet, pioneered by the likes of Petrarch and Shakespeare, typically contains fourteen lines a set, regular rhyme scheme the volta (or turn) and a thematic emphasis on love or romanticization. ![]() Hayes takes inspiration from Wanda Coleman’s work on defining the American Sonnet (Hayes 91) throughout the collection, Hayes’s seventy poems then critically resist and embrace the traditional form, seeking to forge his own American definition. Terrance Hayes’s collection American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, 2018. ![]()
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