On Wednesday, March 27, the 58th Wallace Stevens Poetry Program with Terrance Hayes was hosted at the Konover Auditorium at the Dodd Center for Human Rights. Before the poetry reading, there was a reception.
According to his website, Hayes is a distinguished Silver Professor of English at New York University with multiple critically lauded books such as his 1999 debut “Muscular Music,” which won the Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and numerous positive reviews from poetry critics.
Hayes’ more recent work includes his 2018 collection “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin” . “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin” is a collection of 70 sonnets bearing the same title written as a response to Donald Trump’s presidency, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Hayes has multiple other books that have been acknowledged by awards, critics and readers alike such as his 2002 poetry collection “Hip Logic” and the 2018 pseudo-biography “To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight.”
According to the Wallace Steven’s Poetry Program website, “Hayes’ visit is organized by the Wallace Stevens Poetry Program Committee in UConn’s Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Funding is provided by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the UConn Humanities Institute, UConn’s African American Cultural Center, the English Department Speaker’s Fund, the Irish Studies Speaker’s Fund and private individuals who donated generously through the 2023 UConn Gives Campaign.”
The program aims to promote the creation of poetry as Wallace Stevens made his own poems and published them while working as an insurance executive. There is an annual contest where UConn Storrs students regardless of major can submit their poetry and the first, second and third places get a monetary award and their poetry published in the “Long River Review.” 2024 is the 60th anniversary of the first program’s initiation. Since then, a wide variety of poets read poetry for the program.
At the reception, first-place winner for the high school Wallace Stevens’ Poetry Contest and critically lauded writer, Brooke Vazquez, a junior at Rockville High School, described poetry as “an outlet for you to express yourself and capture a moment to immerse people in.” Additionally, when asked why poetry is important, she said “It gives people a platform to express ourselves creatively in a variety of ways.”
Penelope Pelizzon began the program by acknowledging how it was the first time in 5 years that there was a physical Wallace Stevens Poetry Program. She recited the William Butler Yeats poem “The Wild Swans at Coole” in honor of the Irish Studies Speaker’s Fund.
Sean Forbes then introduced the UConn Early College Experience Program founded in 1955, where high school students could take classes for high school and college credit. He introduced the young writers who won the Early College Experience Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest, though Yimin Wu, a junior at Hall High School and Mikayla Vazquez, a junior at Manchester High School, didn’t read their poems. First place winner Brooke Vazquez read her creative and skin-crawling poem “Alphabetic Entomophobia.”.
Pelizzon introduced the UConn Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest prize winners: Nikki Blumenfeld read “Topography,” Anh Le read “Descent” and Madison Bigelow read “Several elegies, all at once.”
Julie Choffel introduced Hayes, saying that he once said, “Language is always burdened by thought; I’m just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.”
The first poem Hayes read was the reaction to modern American politics, “American Sonnet for the New Year,” from “So To Speak,” his 2023 poetry collection. It centered around the repetition of the word “ugly” followed by multiple adverbs and seemed to mimic how cyclical news cycles can be with how they emphasize negativity, making the audience jaded.
Hayes gave the context afterward that he wanted to write a book for the 4 years of the Trump presidency, but his editor told him he had enough material for a book, so he published the collection. Additionally, when addressing the somewhat hopeful ending that things will get less ugly, he said “You got to change your mind in a sonnet.”
When talking about the process of making art, Hayes said “I don’t want to finish a poem because I have to make another one. When I paint, I give it away.” He is a proponent of creating things inspired by others. Hayes told a story of how he finished writing a poem after his son turned fifteen, inspired by how his son had a harmonica at the age of four as an example.
“Hyla Arborea,” (Latin for “tree frog”) was a poem about how Hayes’ son’s harmonica playing reminded him of the animal. The flea market scene of the poem is especially powerful, as it could be like a form of archive. Since another family member of his was jealous of how his son had a poem dedicated to him, Hayes dedicated the poem “Capra” (Latin for “goat”) to her. The poem was both a story and a history of the goat. It was humorous and heartfelt simultaneously.
Hayes then read “American Sonnet for My Grandfather’s Love Child,” a poem about his mother’s experience, and “Ours Poetica of Bacon,” a story about a pig who wanted an object before being revealed that it used to be human.
Hayes introduced “Muscular Fantasy” by saying that it was part of a series he calls “Quarantine Quatrains,” stanzas of four lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said it was based on rhyme scheme rather than purpose, but the purpose resonated with the audience nonetheless as he mixed humor and serious reflection.
“How To Fold” is about someone Hayes was dating teaching him how to fold clothes to be extremely small and had an underlying theme of love.
Hayes ended the reading session by reading a compilation of Wallace Stevens’ usages of snow in his writings and his poem “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” before reading a poem written by himself dedicated to Stevens. He acknowledged Stevens’ privilege, saying “I think it’s useful to see what freedom’s like.”
There was a book sale and signing following the poetry reading.