I’ve developed a process for writing my book reflections. Once I’ve read the book, I go back through any notes I took and look up unfamiliar concepts or questions I might have. I delve into reviews to give myself some background about what other people thought. When I’ve decided I’ve read and learned enough, I’ll write a rough outline and start the first draft. After three books, it’s become my standard playbook for tackling the last post of each month. This time, my process failed. 

At first, it was the pages of questions and notes. I tried to tackle them little by little, but the answer to one question would lead me to a different question and then that question would introduce me to a whole new set of questions, and on and on and on it went. I gave up two pages in and took to reading reviews instead. Here I realized that the reviewers, usually other poets, had the language and practice for reflecting on the abstract. That leaves me, someone with very little poetry experience, floundering to describe the work or my reactions to it. Though my process has failed in this instance, it’s a good reminder: we’re all fish out of water in some areas of our lives. I’ve done my best to grow some legs so this reflection can walk on land. 

Lighthead by Terrance Hayes is a collection of poems that deal with both the vastness of human experience and the molecules of memory that make an individual. In Lighthead, Hayes plays with form, his words bursting against the walls of more traditional forms such as the sonnet or the ghazal. His wordplay shines in the novel forms he creates or commandeers from other walks of life, such as the Golden Shovel or the Pecha Kucha. Throughout the book, the poems are sequenced in a way where meaning and mood can spill over from one page to the next. The collection won the 2010 National Book Award for good reason; it was far more than I bargained for. 

Hayes’ ability to invoke vibrant scenes from seemingly discordant words is one of my favorite aspects of his writing. Words, their meaning, and their phrasing all jangle together like liquor and ice in a mixed drink shaker, the eventual pour being smooth with complex, layered flavors. This shines most in the poems with narrative qualities such as “For Brothers of the Dragon”, “The Avocado”, and “Arbor for Butch”. The longer the poem, the more time the words have to intermingle their meaning and power. For instance, take this excerpt from “For Brothers of the Dragon”:

[IMAGERY]

I have no problem with the flaws of memory. The bird carcass

stiff as the shoe of a hit-and-run victim on the side of the road

might just be a veil the wind pulled from the face of a new bride.

Why was the imagination invented, if not to remake?

The juxtaposition of the dead (the bird carcass, the shoe of a hit-and-run victim) and the bright, vibrant living (face of a new bride) forces you to compare the two images and take stock of the differences and similarities. The gap of difference between the two informs on the heading of this Pecha Kucha, [IMAGERY], a literary device used to create depth in an otherwise unremarkable scene. Alone this section of the poem is good but, as a part of a narrative whole, it shines once you get to this stanza later in the poem:

[POINT OF VIEW]

The chin of Malcolm’s widow will quiver below her veil.

Where is home now? she’ll think. It will be the wind

or her trembling that moves the veil. I am not going to describe

her face because I want you to think of her as a bride.

The image of the bride comes back once again in the context of death (as Malcolm’s widow). This time, it is not alone; it has the context of that previous stanza, [IMAGERY], and benefits from the idea that the author wants you to think of the dead bird, of the shoe of someone killed and then abandoned, all while pertaining to the widow who is now a bride to death. These are only two sections of one poem- the entire book is like this, the wordplay clever and evocative, even if you’re not quite sure what the poem is about. 

Hayes’ inventive language excels when he plays with form. My favorite and I feel most original, is the Pecha Kucha. Hayes didn’t invent Pecha Kucha; the Pecha Kucha is a Japanese presentation format, derived from a need to keep people from speaking too long during presentations. Pecha Kucha allows for twenty slides or images and the presenter has twenty seconds to speak on each slide. The form has turned into a social gathering, like a show-and-tell, with clubs all over Japan. Hayes took this presentation structure and translated it into a poetry form, where headers replace images and each stanza is short and refers to the information in the header. Using this form he plays with narrative, with the relationship between stanzas and headers, and when referencing actual artwork for his headers, takes the reader on an almost true-to-form Pecha Kucha should they look up the artwork. 

The Golden Shovel, another new form, has Hayes taking the words from a different poem and placing them at the beginning or end of each line of his poem. Both poems then speak to each other, not necessarily in a call-and-response, but in a conversation. Hayes often expands on the original poem, picking apart the things left unsaid in the original or looking for a new direction to take the words in the modern landscape. While the Golden Shovel and the Pecha Kucha are ground-breakingly cool, they do bring me to the one issue I had while reading the collection: the incredible amount of background knowledge needed to understand some of the work. 

Remember the pages of questions I mentioned? With my limited poetry knowledge, I found myself taking notes on nearly every poem. Words or names to look up later. Poems that he used the Golden Shovel technique on that I’d never seen before. Twenty different art pieces used for headers in a Pecha Kucha. Then, on top of my notes, Hayes lists references in the back of the book as well, to aid readers in understanding the mood, emotion, or context better. For some poems it’s as simple as looking up a sculptor’s work; for others, it’s listening to an entire album of music. It’s hard to justify listening to an hour’s worth of music for a single-page poem (it doesn’t feel like a sound time investment. Ba-dum-tiss). This may be my fault, though- as I mentioned in my introduction for Lighthead, I always hated being told in school to dissect poetry. When I chose a book of poetry to write and reflect on, what exactly did I think I’d end up having to do? Was I not writing this reflection, perhaps the pages of questions would feel less like homework and more like slow discovery.

The largely referential work didn’t stop me from enjoying Lighthead. It was a fun experiment, a challenge for my brain and my patience. I appreciate being challenged and finding beauty along the way. I would recommend this book to others, even if they’re not a fan of poetry, with the caveat that, no, you don’t have to look everything up the whole time. Enjoy the way the words sound out loud, enjoy the imagery and the emotion on the page. Understanding isn’t always the goal of poetry or any other art- sometimes it’s just summoning a feeling. 

Look forward to next week where I’ll introduce the next Book of the Month- it’s a bit of a return to form for me, to give my challenged brain a bit of a rest. I hope to see you then!