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Wind in a Box
The third collection of poetry from the author of Lighthead , winner of the 2010 National Book Award
Watch for the new collection of poetry from Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin , coming in June of 2018
Terrance Hayes is an elegant and adventurous writer with disarming humor, grace, tenderness, and brilliant turns of phrase. He is very much interested in what it means to be an artist and a black man. In his first collection, Muscular Music , he took the reader through a living library of cultural icons, from Shaft and Fat Albert to John Coltrane and Miles Davis. His second collection, Hip Logic, continued these explorations of popular culture, fatherhood, cultural heritage, and loss. Wind in a Box , Hayes’s resonant new collection, continues his interest in how traditions (of poetry and culture alike) can be simultaneously upended and embraced. The struggle for freedom (the wind) within containment (the box) is the unifying motif as Hayes explores how identity is shaped by race, heritage, and spirituality. This new book displays not only what the Los Angeles Times calls the range of a "bold virtuoso," but also the imaginative fervor of a poet in love with poetry.
Watch for the new collection of poetry from Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin , coming in June of 2018
Terrance Hayes is an elegant and adventurous writer with disarming humor, grace, tenderness, and brilliant turns of phrase. He is very much interested in what it means to be an artist and a black man. In his first collection, Muscular Music , he took the reader through a living library of cultural icons, from Shaft and Fat Albert to John Coltrane and Miles Davis. His second collection, Hip Logic, continued these explorations of popular culture, fatherhood, cultural heritage, and loss. Wind in a Box , Hayes’s resonant new collection, continues his interest in how traditions (of poetry and culture alike) can be simultaneously upended and embraced. The struggle for freedom (the wind) within containment (the box) is the unifying motif as Hayes explores how identity is shaped by race, heritage, and spirituality. This new book displays not only what the Los Angeles Times calls the range of a "bold virtuoso," but also the imaginative fervor of a poet in love with poetry.
112 pages, Paperback
First published March 28, 2006
20 people are currently reading
756 people want to read
About the author
Terrance Hayes
59 books333 followersTerrance Hayes is the author of six poetry collections, including American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, How to Be Drawn, and Lighthead, which won the National Book Award. He is a MacArthur Fellow and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews
December 18, 2015
A foray into poetry after a very long break from it. I will not say I regret it, because Terrance Hayes is not a bad poet, but sadly I did not feel the "the struggle for freedom (the wind) within containment (the box)" that everyone else seemed to feel. I would more likely go and watch him perform his pieces instead of reading them, to me they felt more like very powerful slam poetry, rather than simply reading it and annotating.
November 2, 2010
WHOA.
What a talent. So much invention and so much control. He can do almost anything, and does. Even when the book is at its slowest--some of the "Blue" series, maybe--there are always a couple of lines that knock you out.
WHOA.
What a talent. So much invention and so much control. He can do almost anything, and does. Even when the book is at its slowest--some of the "Blue" series, maybe--there are always a couple of lines that knock you out.
WHOA.
October 5, 2008
Hayes has something that I really like, something that's rare in modern poets: he has the ability to be both intelligent and playful at the same time. He combines a number of different modern poetry styles to create poems that are confusing, thrilling, interesting, sad, childish, and heartfelt all in the best of possible ways. I never found myself reading a poem I didn't like.
December 10, 2020
A fantastic and unusual collection. Explores the blues through several dozen perspectives. This was my first exploration of Hayes, and is a sturdy introduction to a commanding voice.
November 13, 2022
This book and a little research is more of an education on black history in the United States than is probably offered in many American schools.
This collection is rooted deeply in black history, black figures, black lineage, black culture, black music, black suffering, black love, and the black future (although it only teeters on the edge of what I have known to be Afrofuturism).
Wind in a Box is representative of the containing the uncontainable, dreaming the impossible, idealizing the future, and other paradoxical imaginings. But much of this book is a bit more grounded than the title suggests. Hayes writes a series of poems in which he co-opts the styles of other writers, including ‘The Blue Bowie,’ ‘The Blue Suess,’ ‘The Blue Borges,’ ‘The Blue Kool,’ and the ‘Blue Strom’ (among others). All of which grow into a several poem series in which the reader is finally introduced to ‘The Blue Terrance.’ In this way as well as within the themes and focal elements of each individual poem, Hayes is placing himself within a lineage of writers, a lineage of philosophy, and at the forefront of a more hopeful line coming from him.
In many ways, this is one of the more hopeful collections of poems I have ever read. While unflinching situated in the reality of the Okemah lynching postcard, it is also indulgent in the value of black cultural icons like James Booker in ‘Upright Blues,’ and open to the Wind in a Box belief that what comes next will be different and could be better.
This collection is rooted deeply in black history, black figures, black lineage, black culture, black music, black suffering, black love, and the black future (although it only teeters on the edge of what I have known to be Afrofuturism).
Wind in a Box is representative of the containing the uncontainable, dreaming the impossible, idealizing the future, and other paradoxical imaginings. But much of this book is a bit more grounded than the title suggests. Hayes writes a series of poems in which he co-opts the styles of other writers, including ‘The Blue Bowie,’ ‘The Blue Suess,’ ‘The Blue Borges,’ ‘The Blue Kool,’ and the ‘Blue Strom’ (among others). All of which grow into a several poem series in which the reader is finally introduced to ‘The Blue Terrance.’ In this way as well as within the themes and focal elements of each individual poem, Hayes is placing himself within a lineage of writers, a lineage of philosophy, and at the forefront of a more hopeful line coming from him.
In many ways, this is one of the more hopeful collections of poems I have ever read. While unflinching situated in the reality of the Okemah lynching postcard, it is also indulgent in the value of black cultural icons like James Booker in ‘Upright Blues,’ and open to the Wind in a Box belief that what comes next will be different and could be better.
June 3, 2008
Wind In a Box
offers up a well organized collection of poems in sections devoted to personal history, blues variations, prose poems and attempts at getting to the core of defining one's lineage.
What I liked most was the evident conclusion that the poet was a work in progress, that the blues will haunt in various shades forever, no matter how one tries to define it. And that trying to define oneself includes responding to pop culture, reminding ourselves of the past, and continually asking the same question until the right answer arises. (I was going to quote something here but I can't find the passage.)
Terrance Hayes's lyric is tight, visual, and so packed with music.
We clawed free the moss and brambles,
the colonies of crab-weed, the thorns
patrolling the stems and I liked it then:
the mute duty that tightened my parents'
backs as if they meant to work
the devil from his den.
(from "Root")
And to anyone approaching, our laughter
Must have sounded like the laughter of crows, those birds
That leave everything beneath them trampled and broken open
(from "Pine")
There's more. Lot's more. But I don't want to ruin it for the prospective reader.
I first encountered Terrance Hayes's work by through some of the literary podcasts I listen to. Quite a few of them featured him reading his poetry ("Blue Terrance" [If you subtract the minor losses...]) is a favorite. And some were interviews with the author, from which I learned that he went to college to study painting and was encouraged to write poetry. Pittsburg is infused into these poems, but so is the blues music. And so is the long and complicated history of the African-American diaspora.
Because of the audio introduction, searched around town for on of his books but had to resort to special ordering it from my local bookstore.
This is his third book. If you are into what's happening at the talented end of contemporary poetry, do read this book.
What I liked most was the evident conclusion that the poet was a work in progress, that the blues will haunt in various shades forever, no matter how one tries to define it. And that trying to define oneself includes responding to pop culture, reminding ourselves of the past, and continually asking the same question until the right answer arises. (I was going to quote something here but I can't find the passage.)
Terrance Hayes's lyric is tight, visual, and so packed with music.
We clawed free the moss and brambles,
the colonies of crab-weed, the thorns
patrolling the stems and I liked it then:
the mute duty that tightened my parents'
backs as if they meant to work
the devil from his den.
(from "Root")
And to anyone approaching, our laughter
Must have sounded like the laughter of crows, those birds
That leave everything beneath them trampled and broken open
(from "Pine")
There's more. Lot's more. But I don't want to ruin it for the prospective reader.
I first encountered Terrance Hayes's work by through some of the literary podcasts I listen to. Quite a few of them featured him reading his poetry ("Blue Terrance" [If you subtract the minor losses...]) is a favorite. And some were interviews with the author, from which I learned that he went to college to study painting and was encouraged to write poetry. Pittsburg is infused into these poems, but so is the blues music. And so is the long and complicated history of the African-American diaspora.
Because of the audio introduction, searched around town for on of his books but had to resort to special ordering it from my local bookstore.
This is his third book. If you are into what's happening at the talented end of contemporary poetry, do read this book.
April 26, 2020
A Postcard from Okemah
Turned from the camera's eye, hovering,
between river & bridge, the hung woman
looks downstream, & snagged in the air
beside her, the body of her young son.
They are tassels on a drawn curtain;
they are the closed eyes of the black boy
who will find them while leading his cow
to the river bank; they are the bells
that will clamor around the animal's neck
when it lowers its head to drink.
The boy dangles in midair
like a hooked fish, his pants hanging
from his ankles like a tail fin.
On the bridge women pose
in aprons & feathered bonnets,
the men wear wide-brimmed hats
with bowties or dungarees;
there are three small girls leaning
against the railing & a boy nestled
beneath the wing of his father's arm.
I count sixty-seven citizens & children
staring at what must have been a flash
& huff of smoke. The photographer
must have stood on a boat deck,
though from this angle
he could have been standing on the water
with his arms outstretched.
He must have asked them to smile
at the camera & later, scrawled his copyright
& condolences on the back of the postcards
he made for the murdered man's friends.
"The Negroes got what would have been due
to them under process of the law,"
the sheriff said. His deputy
had been shot when the posse searched
the suspects' cabin for stolen meat.
To protect her son, the mother
claimed she'd fired the gun.
The mob dragged them both
from the jail bound in a saddle string.
If you look closely you can see a pattern
of tiny flowers printed on her dress;
you can see an onlooker's hand opened
as if he's just released a dark bouquet.
Now all of Okemah, Oklahoma, is hushed.
Now even the children in attendance are dead.
After that day in 1911, it did not rain again.
To believe in God, this is the reckoning I claim.
It is a Monday morning years too late.
All the rocking chairs & shopping carts,
all the mailboxes & choir pews are empty.
I cannot hear the psalms of salvation
or forgiveness, the gospel of Mercy.
I cannot ask who is left more disfigured:
the ones who are beaten or the ones who beat;
the ones who are hung or the ones who hang.
Turned from the camera's eye, hovering,
between river & bridge, the hung woman
looks downstream, & snagged in the air
beside her, the body of her young son.
They are tassels on a drawn curtain;
they are the closed eyes of the black boy
who will find them while leading his cow
to the river bank; they are the bells
that will clamor around the animal's neck
when it lowers its head to drink.
The boy dangles in midair
like a hooked fish, his pants hanging
from his ankles like a tail fin.
On the bridge women pose
in aprons & feathered bonnets,
the men wear wide-brimmed hats
with bowties or dungarees;
there are three small girls leaning
against the railing & a boy nestled
beneath the wing of his father's arm.
I count sixty-seven citizens & children
staring at what must have been a flash
& huff of smoke. The photographer
must have stood on a boat deck,
though from this angle
he could have been standing on the water
with his arms outstretched.
He must have asked them to smile
at the camera & later, scrawled his copyright
& condolences on the back of the postcards
he made for the murdered man's friends.
"The Negroes got what would have been due
to them under process of the law,"
the sheriff said. His deputy
had been shot when the posse searched
the suspects' cabin for stolen meat.
To protect her son, the mother
claimed she'd fired the gun.
The mob dragged them both
from the jail bound in a saddle string.
If you look closely you can see a pattern
of tiny flowers printed on her dress;
you can see an onlooker's hand opened
as if he's just released a dark bouquet.
Now all of Okemah, Oklahoma, is hushed.
Now even the children in attendance are dead.
After that day in 1911, it did not rain again.
To believe in God, this is the reckoning I claim.
It is a Monday morning years too late.
All the rocking chairs & shopping carts,
all the mailboxes & choir pews are empty.
I cannot hear the psalms of salvation
or forgiveness, the gospel of Mercy.
I cannot ask who is left more disfigured:
the ones who are beaten or the ones who beat;
the ones who are hung or the ones who hang.
November 28, 2020
I'll definitely read more of Hayes's poetry. He's generous and gifted.
You might also find this interview published online in January 2019 interesting.
Below is my (meager) attempt to express something Hayes showed me.
Meet the New Box
In life, we are the body and the protean,
Intangible everything else.
In poetry, words, sounds, and ideas
Inhabit and die within the form.
In death, even the everything else
Is constrained by time.
You might also find this interview published online in January 2019 interesting.
Below is my (meager) attempt to express something Hayes showed me.
Meet the New Box
In life, we are the body and the protean,
Intangible everything else.
In poetry, words, sounds, and ideas
Inhabit and die within the form.
In death, even the everything else
Is constrained by time.
April 22, 2021
re-read - last I read was in a 2015 creative writing course in college
May 3, 2011
Wind in a Box is Terrance Hayes’ third book of poetry. The collection was named one of the Best 100 Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. He continues in the same vein, the techniques and subject matter that has garnered him so much literary praise and numerous awards. The collection deals with the often avoided issues of racial tensions in our society. Throughout the work, the tensions of the overarching metaphor are expounded; for Hayes the wind seemingly represents freedom and the box representing an imprisonment or containment. He utilizes a range of forms and conventions of poetry.
In his piece “Woofer (When I Consider the African-American), he surmises the “much discussed dilemma of the African-American”. He weaves a narrative of an encounter he considers a first love and comes to the conclusion that “when I consider the African-American I think not of the tek nines of my generation…I think of a string of people connected one to another and including the two of us there in the basement linked by a hyphen filled with blood; linked by a blood filled baton in one great historical relay.” This beautifully crafter extended metaphor of the African-American experience is where Terrance Hayes continues to excel.
The work often has a musical-like feel and flow. It links diverse ideas all allowing for self discovery; both for the reader and poet. The way his constructs words, sentences, and phrases all have the potential to heal those longing for a sort of reconciliation.
Unlike any poet in this era he successfully tackles the issue of racial prejudice. Based on a photograph, he presents the shameful legacy of lynching in "A Postcard from Okemah." Both enchanting and extraordinarily lamentable the poem describes a young mother and son hanging from a bridge above a river.
Hayes presents the shocking image:
“The boy dangles in midair
like a hooked fish, his pants hanging
from his ankles like a tail fin.”
"I cannot ask who is left more disfigured,
... the ones who are hung or the ones who hang."
In his piece “Woofer (When I Consider the African-American), he surmises the “much discussed dilemma of the African-American”. He weaves a narrative of an encounter he considers a first love and comes to the conclusion that “when I consider the African-American I think not of the tek nines of my generation…I think of a string of people connected one to another and including the two of us there in the basement linked by a hyphen filled with blood; linked by a blood filled baton in one great historical relay.” This beautifully crafter extended metaphor of the African-American experience is where Terrance Hayes continues to excel.
The work often has a musical-like feel and flow. It links diverse ideas all allowing for self discovery; both for the reader and poet. The way his constructs words, sentences, and phrases all have the potential to heal those longing for a sort of reconciliation.
Unlike any poet in this era he successfully tackles the issue of racial prejudice. Based on a photograph, he presents the shameful legacy of lynching in "A Postcard from Okemah." Both enchanting and extraordinarily lamentable the poem describes a young mother and son hanging from a bridge above a river.
Hayes presents the shocking image:
“The boy dangles in midair
like a hooked fish, his pants hanging
from his ankles like a tail fin.”
"I cannot ask who is left more disfigured,
... the ones who are hung or the ones who hang."
November 10, 2020
My second experience with Hayes, after his more recent How to Be Drawn. While my appreciation here doesn't match the previous collection, its still overall high. I think this time my personal interests simply didn't match the talent on display; there are lots of great tight-narrative poems here, but I don't enjoy that as much as his more ambiguous and free-floating later stuff. Many of the "Blue" poems were interesting and so obviously not the poet's own voice, which was both good and bad to me - I guess it was fine for the context of a whole collection, they certainly weren't my least favorites. Some that I did especially enjoy include: "It's a Small World," "Threshold," "Variation on a Black Cinema Treasure: Broken Earth".
March 17, 2010
Good reading. Like his word play. His ability to write about people, show history, expose racism, delve into the soul of what is real. He has a lot of blues in this book. And he writes in new forms, but not traditional, more modern forms that I don't know the name of, maybe he makes them up. Fresh. Jazz. Alive. A beat to a beat to a beat. Want to read more of his books—he says each is written in a different form. When I took a class with him he had us write in a way I'd not written before, and I want to write more like that.
And Wind in a Box is a whole series of poems all with the same name! How do you track poems with the same name?
And Wind in a Box is a whole series of poems all with the same name! How do you track poems with the same name?
March 28, 2018
I love Terrance Hayes' voice. From amazing collections like there to the mere introductions he gives to the poems he picks for The New York Times. He writes with style and diversity. This collection itself contains mutliple modern styles of writing, structure, rhyme and sound. He tackles fundamental issues of race and history; writes tenderly but powerfully about sexual assault, and explores with both humor and insight the idea of family and the way pop culture shapes us. He is an amazing talent, and this is an amazing collection. Well worth jumping into and starting a much longer survey of all his works.
April 27, 2015
I can't recommend this collection enough. He has an amazing scope and range of writing. Incorporates perspective on race and masculinity throughout, often where least expected. I enjoyed reading many of these poems outloud to myself.
March 3, 2010
only read one poem
and it was the best.
The Blue Terrance
and it was the best.
The Blue Terrance
June 11, 2019
"Moreover, these days there is so much competition—and among very good writers. At the same time, the poetry world has always been somewhat insular, with established writers helping younger ones break into publishing. Poets continue to need support from the literary community and also must make themselves known within it—whether small-scale or large. For better or for worse, writers today who “network” increase their chances for publication. Of course, many talented writers (and editors) rightly promote others like themselves." -- Pauline Uchmanowicz, author of
Starfish
my link text
Starfish
my link text
March 25, 2020
more fantastic poems from terrance hayes, he is definitely one of the best and one of my fav active poets, he is extremely imaginative, lyrical, insightful, powerful, funny, hard-hitting and touching this collection has some great lines and a few stellar poems in it, but every poem flows and is enjoyable and attention-getting and is done with a level of insightfullness that produces thoughfulness and smiles and shock and sadness check his stuff out
November 3, 2017
3.5
--
This collection really had me vascillating between that 3 and 4 rating. Ultimately, though, there was just something about the form and structure of the poems that I didn't personally prefer.
Favorite line:
--
This collection really had me vascillating between that 3 and 4 rating. Ultimately, though, there was just something about the form and structure of the poems that I didn't personally prefer.
Favorite line:
God bless the rage in us. / It's how we know each other.
May 11, 2019
This collection is profoundly striking. A commitment and an awareness that I rarely see. Hayes really shows how well he knows the world as well as his place in it. He knows how to be an active participant and a passive observer.
December 8, 2020
A lot of the poems resonated with me as they felt like a gush of wind into my gut. However, some of the references and poems were lost on me. I would be interested to know how I feel and what I understand on a second or third reread.
April 1, 2022
Quite good. I suffered most from my own ignorance. I'm not familiar enough with a lot of the references to really get the fullness of the work, and the ones I did get made me understand what I was missing. Good inspiration to explore more sources.
January 15, 2018
I know I'm against the grain with this one... but I just wasn't in the mood for this much penis in my poetry.
February 14, 2018
I need to start reading poetry collections either in one sitting or within a few days of starting. When I set it down too long it's hard to remember how I'm liking it.
March 2, 2020
My first book picked up at a "read and return" dropbox in the neighborhood. Blunt and raw, seems to have more lines within the lines.
July 11, 2020
3 1/2. I think it might have tainted my assessment that I read Hayes' most recent collection before going back to this, an earlier, less refined work. C'est la vie.
September 19, 2020
Visceral and blunt. Hayes does work in real time.
June 9, 2021
" Suppose you were nothing but a song
in a busted speaker? Suppose you had to wipe
sweat from the brow of a righteous woman,
but all you owned was a dirty rag? "
From "Blue Terrance"
in a busted speaker? Suppose you had to wipe
sweat from the brow of a righteous woman,
but all you owned was a dirty rag? "
From "Blue Terrance"
June 12, 2021
Powerful and moving.
August 7, 2024
This ink. This name. This blood and wonder. This box. This body in a box. This blood in the body. This wind in the blood.
March 8, 2017
3-5 poems in here that I loved ("The Blue _____"). Everything else was 50/50.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 74 reviews