Hip Logic

Description

The second collection of poetry from the author of Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award

Terrance Hayes is a dazzlingly original poet, interested in adventurous explorations of subject and form. His new work, Hip Logic, is full of poetic tributes to the likes of Paul Robeson, Big Bird, Balthus, and Mr. T, as well as poems based on the anagram principle of words within a word. Throughout, Hayes’s verse dances in a kind of homemade music box, with notes that range from tender to erudite, associative to narrative, humorous to political. Hip Logic does much to capture the nuances of contemporary male African American identity and confirms Hayes’s reputation as one of the most compelling new voices in American poetry.Hip LogicLorde

I. At the First Clear Word
Emcee
Touch
The Things-No-One-Knows Blues
ARS Poetica #789
Hip Logic
Sonnet
Mr. T-
Shaft and the Enchanted Shoe Factory or ARS Poetica: The Epic Quest for Language
Squawk
Butter
Origin of the Days
Gospel of the Two Sisters

II. A Gram of &s
Abductor
Although
Ambulance
Apothecary
Beckoned
Bowling
Breathe
Careless
Corporal
Example

III. Conjure
Friday Poem
For Paul Robeson
Diego Rivera – Dama de Blanco, 1939
For Robert Hayden
Broken Dangerfield Newby Villanelle
William H. Johnson
Ode to Balthus
The Gulf Stream/Four Studies
Sleeping Woman
Still Music

IV. A Gram of &s
Gander
General
Masculine
Nuclear
Overseas
Preface
Repaid
Saintly
Segregate
Stupor
Toenails

V. The Law of Falling and Catching Up
Fire
Gun/Woman/Son
Heartthrob
Mother and Son
Blues Procession
Florida
The Flame
Ode to Stone
Alter Call
Autumn
The Same City

Notes
Acknowledgments

“Hayes is one elegant poet.  First you’ll marvel at his skill, his near-perfect pitch, his disarming humor, his brilliant turns of phrase.  Then you’ll notice the grace, the tenderness.” – Cornelius Eady
 
“A book like no other. . . his range, like his original music, is that of a bold virtuoso . . . the imaginative logic in these poems is irrefutable.” – The Los Angeles Times
 
“Here is a brilliant and compassionate poet inventing new doorways for the heart.” – Toi DerricotteTerrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are Wind In a Box, Hip Logic, and Muscular Music. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. How To Be Drawn, his most recent collection of poems, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and received the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry.US

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