American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry

One of the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2018

A powerful, timely, dazzling collection of sonnets from one of America's most acclaimed poets, Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award-winning author of Lighthead

"Sonnets that reckon with Donald Trump's America." -The New York Times

In seventy poems bearing the same title, Terrance Hayes explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. Written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency, these poems are haunted by the country's past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Inventive, compassionate, hilarious, melancholy, and bewildered--the wonders of this new collection are irreducible and stunning.

Author: Terrance Hayes
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 06/19/2018
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.26lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780143133186


Award: National Book Awards - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/16/2018
Library Journal 05/15/2018 pg. 63
Booklist 05/15/2018 pg. 9
Shelf Awareness 07/13/2018

About the Author
Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are Wind In a Box, Hip Logic, and Muscular Music. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship. How To Be Drawn, his most recent collection of poems, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and received the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry.