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I want to ride to the ridge where the West commencesAnd gaze at the moon till I lose my sensesAnd I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences—Cole Porter & Robert Fletcher, 1934I wade through water and I wade through mudEvery time I calm down it’s a bucket o’ blood—Dixie chain gang field holler…gone ballistic, not home but bloodon the range…—Wanda Coleman, American Sonnet
The first UK collection for the late American poet introduces British readers to a thrilling, sardonic voice
In the collection, Hayes acknowledges the poet Wanda Coleman (1946-2013) with “tremendous gratitude” for the term American Sonnet, and quotes an interview in which she interestingly describes how she would set the form as a writing assignment. “When asked for a definition she called poems jazz sonnets ‘with certain properties—progression, improvisation, mimicry, etc,” he adds (Coleman’s American Sonnet 35 can be heard here) and concludes: “I decided to have fun — to blow my soul.” The “volta” is a key component in his own renovation of sonnet form, and this week’s po...