Love letters to a past and future assassin
"In a second I'll tell you how little writing rescues." That promise, from the opening poem of Terrance Hayes' "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin", is only partially kept.
The poems in the book are in constant motion. They shuttle back and forth between Emmett Till and Maxine Waters, slavery and hip hop, the nation's future and the past it can't bear to look at.
The assassin of the title is sometimes an antagonist. But just as often, the assassin's face looks back at the reader from the mirror. Terrance Hayes is a poet, painter, Scrabble player, and National Book Award winner. He joined Bill Radke for a conversation about politics, poetry, and the blackness at the heart of America.
Hear Terrance Hayes read a sonnet:
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Bill Radke
Host
Bill hosts Week In Review and Words in Review. After starting with KUOW as a University of Washington student in 1985, Bill was KUOW's morning host in the '90s and the creator of past show, Rewind, a news-satire show heard on KUOW and nationwide on NPR. Bill moved away to Southern California to host American Public Media's Weekend America and Marketplace Morning Report and returned to KUOW in 2012.
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