2010 National Book Award Winner,
Poetry
Terrance Hayes
Lighthead
Penguin Books
Interview by Jean Hartig
Jean
Hartig: What was your reaction to Lighthead
having been shortlisted for the National Book Award?
Terrance Hayes:
Absolute joy followed
by the absolute terror of having to wear a tux. Since
then, I’ve been thinking mostly about how terrific
the finalist reading will be. I suspect I’ll come
home with a trunk of new books from every category.
JH: What compels you to investigate history—of
your family, of figures such as Malcolm X and General
Patton—in verse?
TH: Because I believe memory is a form of the imagination, my poems are often drawn to and drawn from the well of history. I’m interested in the relationship between private, local history and broader, cultural history. Metaphor is a wonderful tool for exploring this dynamic because it encourages empathy. It shrinks the distance between the past and the present, us and them, you and me.
JH: Fela Kuti, Antony
and the Johnsons, David Bowie, and other musicians make
appearances in Lighthead. How did music influence
the writing of this book?
TH: I live in music. It is where my poems begin—sometimes
at the level of syntax and sound, sometimes at the particular
level of whatever song or composition is pouring from
my earphones. I aspire to write poetry that is as diverse
and provocative as music.
JH: The image of the blindfold arises again and again in these poems—the president in a blindfold of lizards, a snowed-in figure unable to sleep without one, a blindfold of razors, the “uneyed.” How do these incidences of sightlessness resonate with you?
TH: A line from the first poem in Lighthead states it’s “not what you see, but what you perceive: that’s poetry.” The image of the blindfold underscores this idea of trusting one’s perceptions in the face of myriad illusions and constraints.
JH: How did the contemporary
social and cultural landscape of our nation affect your
recent work?
TH: Our social and cultural landscape often informs,
if not infiltrates my work. For Lighthead,
our nation’s wars and tragedies over the last
years threw an unavoidable shadow over my usual themes
and passions. This is as it should be. It means my sense
of the world is often challenged by the world. And it
means my poetry should grow and evolve under the pressure
of those challenges.
Jean Hartig is the author of a poetry chapbook, Ave, Materia, and the associate editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.