Terrance Hayes - Spring Literature Festival 2012
by Sybrina
The first poet I had the privilege
of hearing was Terrance Hayes. He did not look like a poet. I had never seen a
poet up close, but I was not expecting Mr. Hayes. He had to be at least six
foot four and his muscular, yet lean frame stood confidently behind the podium.
He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and his boyish charm quickly won over the
enraptured audience. In his poems, he exposed his deepest self to a room filled
with people. His deep voice resonated in the room as he read from his book Lighthead and spoke of being abandoned
by his father and how the little boy’s heart that still beat inside him, was
still breaking, still reeling in anger over his loss. He also made us laugh over
life’s little inconveniences.
In his lecture on Friday, Mr.
Hayes showed us how to dissect a poem, how to understand it, how to
connect common threads between other poems. Immediately after hearing him read
his work for the first time, I began to notice my surroundings in a different
way. I don’t have to have a profound epiphany to write a poem. I can write a
poem about my pain, my sorrows, my grief, or about what makes me laugh at the
world around me. Mr. Hayes is a painter. He has a degree in painting, yet he is
a poet. I asked Mr. Hayes what changed his mind? He said that there were
paintings in the world that had emotionally moved him, but none had made him
weep. He said that language, words, can move the human spirit in a way that is
unlike any other and I couldn’t agree with him more.
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