How to be drawn

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How to be drawn

Title :

How to be drawn / Terrance Hayes.

Title:

How to be drawn

Author:

Hayes, Terrance.

Format:

Books

Series:

Penguin poets

Penguin poets.

Physical Description:

x, 99 pages ; 23 cm

ISBN:

9780143126881

Production / Publication Information:

New York City : Penguin Books, [2015]

Language:

English

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Material Type	Library	Call Number	Item Barcode	Location
Book	Searching... Andover - Memorial Hall Library	811.54 HAY	31330007784477	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Billerica Public Library	811.54/HAYE 2014	33934003735389	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Burlington Public Library	811.54 HAY	32116003262918	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Groveland - Langley-Adams Library	811.54 HAYES	32121000669552	Searching... Unknown
Book	Searching... Haverhill Public Library	811.54/HAYES T	31479006173933	Searching... Unknown

A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award

In How to Be Drawn , his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes's background as a visual artist, they do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Thus, one poem contemplates the principle of blind contour drawing while others are inspired by maps, graphs, and assorted artists. The formal and emotional versatilities that distinguish Hayes's award-winning poetry are unified by existential focus. Simultaneously complex and transparent, urgent and composed, How to Be Drawn is a mesmerizing achievement.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Hayes delivers another stunner, following up his 2010 National Book Award-winning Lighthead with a collection that sees the poet thinking more deeply about perception-the public and private, the viewed and ignored. In the opening poem, readers receive a warning-"Never mistake what it is for what it looks like"-before being taken through a hall of mirrors, in each one a reflection of race, art, and the makeup of America today. Hayes cops from crime reports and q&as, charts and instructional guides, toying with form to paint the realities of life for modern black Americans. Scenes are drawn with razor sharp lines: NWA plays idly "at a penthouse party with no black people"; the ghosts of lynched slaves are invoked to haunt a "white man/ with Confederate pins." The poems pull from sources as seemingly disparate as Ol' Dirty Bastard and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and evoke the souls of Walt Whitman and Ralph Ellison. The work hurdles between violent beauty ("I want to be as inexplicable/ as something hanging a dozen feet in the air") and stark, philosophical truth telling ("Humanity endures because it is,/ at most, an idea"). Hayes manages not only to reassess the visual, but also to ask what we do with the information once we have it. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Trouble is how we learn what the soul is, writes Hayes in the voice of a speaker talking about his relationship with his mother, a guard at the prison where James Brown was locked up. This propulsive poem fizzes with stinging cultural and emotional insights, as do all the other surprising (each qualifies), plangent (How to Draw a Perfect Circle), and mordantly funny (We Should Make a Documentary about Spades) selections in Hayes' (Lighthead, 2010) assured and electrifying fifth collection. A National Book Award winner and MacArthur Fellow, Hayes writes far-reaching yet intimate monologues that are simultaneously subtle and hard-hitting; he unearths shards of shameful antebellum history and takes measure of the current state of moral and political paralysis. A grandly imaginative and cunningly inventive poet, he performs spirited wordplay and bold formal improvisations using a Q&A, a crime report, an annotated table of contents, and textbook pages. His subjects are just as commandingly varied and provocative, from a homage to Ralph Ellison to musings on home, music, photography, drawing, family, and love. Expansive, original, resounding.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist

Library Journal Review

This collection from 2014 MacArthur Fellow Hayes (Lighthead) is a testament both to the author's facility (which can be, as the synopsis says, "mesmerizing") and misguided verbosity. Each of the three sections-"Troubled Bodies," "Invisible Souls," and "A Circling Mind"-includes experiments with form, such as "Portrait of Etheridge Knight in the Style of a Crime Report Part I" (and "Part II"), "Who are the Tribes," and "Some Maps To Indicate Pittsburgh." Overall, though, this book could have used an aggressive editor, especially for the narrative poems, some of which stretch to several pages and rely on voice alone to transmit substance. Even the poems that stray from clichés do so intermittently. Strikingly clever, effectual lines ("moving at a speed that leaves a stain on the breeze" in "The Deer"; or "I was trying to play like the first mechanic/ asked to repair the first car" in "The Rose Has Teeth") are buried within repetition that doesn't seem to serve the poem. VERDICT Though Hayes is an important author to consider, his work here doesn't always measure up.-Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

* ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The American Reader, American Studies, The Baffler, CHORUS--A Literary Mixtape, Conduit, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Gwarlingo.com, heartjournal online.com, huffingtonpost.org, Huizache, jubilat, Los Angeles Review, Manor House Quarterly, The New Yorker, New York Times T Magazine, The Normal School, Poet Lore, Poetry Magazine, poets.org Poem-A-Day, A Public Space, Rattle, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, storyscapejournal.com, tate.org.uk: Tate Etc. Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Tin House, Terminus, and Vinyl. "New Jersey Poem" also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2013 , edited by Denise Duhamel and David Lehman. "The Rose Has Teeth" also appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012 , edited by Mark Doty and David Lehman. "Model Prison Model" also appeared in 2011 Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses. The poem "Who Are the Tribes" first appeared as a chapbook published by Pilot Books in 2011, with thanks to Betsy Wheeler. "Like Mercy" also appeared in the chapbook Between Ghosts (Center for Book Arts, 2010), with thanks to Sharon Dolin. "Gentle Measures" was written for the "Gods and Monsters" theme in the Hugo House literary series. "How to Draw an Invisible Man" also was published online by the United States Postal Service for the centennial Ralph Ellison stamp. "Instructions for a Séance with Vladimirs" was first commissioned as part of the Book Wings project, a collaboration between the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and the Moscow Art Theatre, with thanks to Nate Brown and Christopher Merrill. "Antebellum House Party" was first written for Found Anew: New Writing Inspired by the South Caroliniana Library Digital Collections , with thanks to Ray McManus. Deepest gratitude to Yona Harvey and Paul Slovak for their help with this collection, and to the United States Artists Zell Fellowship for its generous support. Thanks as well to friends who influenced this manuscript through encouragement and conversation: Elizabeth Alexander, Rob Casper, Radiclani Clytus, Toi Derricotte, and Shara McCallum. WHAT IT LOOK LIKE Dear Ol' Dirty Bastard: I too like it raw, I don't especially care for Duke Ellington Excerpted from How to Be Drawn by Terrance Hayes All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

Excerpts

Excerpts