Quotes by Terrance Hayes - Page 1

Language is always burdened by thought.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Burdened
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Poets are like the decathletes of literature.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Poets
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Every contemporary poet is a door to another poet.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Contemporary
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I value teaching. It's one of the places I get inspiration, engagement.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Engagement
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Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Music
Form
Happens
Breath
Instrument
Poems
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Ask a glass of water why it pities the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Dog
Glasses
Rain
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I always turn to Frank O'Hara and David Berman's 'Actual Air,' which came out in 1999. He's a poet I haven't tired of.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Frank
Tired
Actual
David
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The thing that I've decided is, I don't want to be invisible, but I'd like to be transparent. I want people to see what I'm thinking and see through me.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Invisible
Transparent
Thinking Me People
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We can't really know ourselves because we have not created ourselves. But we can know computers, we can know cars, because anything that we made, we can understand.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Computers
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Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Time Art Me
Poem
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When I applied for grad school, I did not specify genre. I said I wanted an MFA in Creative Writing. I was so cute and stupid! The admissions committee at Pitt decided to put me in poetry.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Cute
Admission
Creative Writing
Genre
Grad
Grad School
Applied
Committee
Pitt
Specify
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Look, the world is everywhere: satellites, end tables, the pink and white poinsettias outside the church; reunions and degrees. All those radiant asterisks . . . Soon it will all make sense.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Church
Degrees
White
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We look at the Mona Lisa and say we're going to do our version of the Mona Lisa. We mirror it. But exaptation would say that painting the Mona Lisa would lead to a whole new place... Bugs Bunny.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Version
Bunny
Mona
New Place
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So the best way to understand poetry, which is made by men, is to imitate, and that goes back to making work as a kind of doorway into new work, as opposed to making work as a mirror of the old work.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Best Way
Best Work Men
Doorway
Goes
Imitate
Mirror
Opposed
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Poems are not read: they are reread. Reread the poem, then read between the lines, then look at it, then watch it, then peek at it: handle it like an object. Contemplate its shadows, angles and dimensions.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Dimensions
Handle
Lines
Angles
Contemplate
Read
Watch
Object
Peek
Poem
Shadows
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My working habit is to separate my aims as a painting from my aims as a poet. They come from very different places and ultimately lead me to very different places... I'll leave what I mean by 'places' ambiguous.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Ambiguous
Habit
Aims
Different Places
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Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
African American
Blackness
Contemporary
Diverse
Race
Reading
Anyone
Enduring
Handling
Quickly
Realize
Subject
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The summer I got to Pittsburgh for graduate school, I house-sat for a Ph.D. student who had a lot of books. One of the books that I found was 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. That was eye opening. I've probably read it every other year since my 20s.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Graduate School
Opening
Pittsburgh
Graduate
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While the debate over banned books usually seems to happen just outside the gates of government, it takes on a new danger and urgency when legislators get involved. Their actions cause voices to be silenced both inside and outside the books. That's un-American.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Banned
Danger
Debate
Gates
Legislators
Urgency
Actions
Silenced
Un-American
Voices
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When I was in high school, I remember writing a research paper, and the teacher said I should write about Langston Hughes. I felt as if I was the only black dude who didn't like Langston Hughes. He didn't seem as dark and layered as someone like Flannery O'Connor.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Dude
Hughes
Layered
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One of Still Lifes many achievements is its paradoxical mix of intensity and stillness. Alexander Longs visions of landscape, identity and "History itself, a joke that no one gets" are simultaneously meditative and alert, restless and focused. This is a smart, compassionate poet. Still Life is a mesmerizing new book.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Achievement
Book
Smart
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I became a poet in Pittsburgh. When I lived in the South, I was a basketball player and primarily a jock. An English teacher essentially suggested that I send the poems that I'd been writing - really just for him - to a few programs, so that when I wound up in Pittsburgh, it's where I figured out that I could actually be a poet.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Teacher
Basketball
Basketball Player
English Teacher
Pittsburgh
Became
English
Essentially
Figured
Programs
Jock
Primarily
Send
Suggested
Wound
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Pittsburgh was the first chance to be in a classroom with other writers, to have conversations with other writers. In fact, after graduate school, I lived in Japan, Ohio and New Orleans, and only upon leaving Pittsburgh did I see what a special community it was for poets, so I was eager to come back. It's a strong arts community across the board.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Classroom
Graduate School
Japan
Leaving
New Orleans
Ohio
Pittsburgh
Board
Conversations
Eager
Graduate
Orleans
Poets
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In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera’s work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Biblical
Book
Flower
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Patricia Smith is one of the best poets around and has been for a long time. Her Blood Dazzler is full of capacious soul and formal inventiveness: the compassion and artfulness necessary to capture the tragedies and Tragedy of Katrina. Smith is herself a storm of beautiful, frightening talent. Her words will wash you or wash you away. I consider this new book a major literary event.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Beautiful
Book
Compassion
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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.
Terrance Hayes / Poet
Expectations
People
Thinking
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Terrance Hayes Quotes - Page 1

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