Terrance Hayes (CRF 2015, Juror) was recently interviewed for the Fall Issue of the Paris Review. Hayes is a Renaissance man—an accomplished poet, yes, but also a painter and a pianist. As a child, he would often sing to keep himself company. “As long as I have music, I don’t ever feel like I’m solitary,” he tells Hilton Als in his Art of Poetry interview. “Even ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ gives me a buzz.”
It was the musicality of the sonnet form in particular that first drew Hayes to poetry. “There was something about syllables, rhythm, beats that felt more natural and intuitive to me than scansion or stress,” he says. Later, he was influenced in his writing by the experimental sounds of David Bowie, James Carroll Booker III, and Miles Davis—and was drawn to the work of poets such as Robert Hayden and Wanda Coleman, who, like those musicians, had a tendency to bend the rules.
Terrance Hayes responded to the request that he make a soundtrack for Paris Review readers, with “Occasional Soundtracks,” a playlist that is also a poem. Click here to listen.
Image: AT THE NUYORICAN POETS CAFE IN NEW YORK, 2018. COURTESY OF TERRANCE HAYES.