Terrance Hayes quotes
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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 -
“Ask a glass of water why it pities the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.”
-- Terrance HayesSource : Terrance Hayes (2010). “Lighthead”, p.14, Penguin
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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 -
“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 HayesSource : Terrance Hayes (2006). “Wind in a Box”, p.32, Penguin
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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 -
“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
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“Shakespeare was a smart dude. He was the president of Rome.”
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“God only wants for us what we would want for ourselves if we were smart enough to want it.”
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“Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.”
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“As life tends to become more and more distracting, let us firmly hold on to books.”
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“There's only few people who have strength to honor someone's achievement without envy.”
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