Muscular Music (Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series: Poetry) Paperback – Box set, October 18, 2006

Terrance Hayes is a name you will see again. I promise you.An earlier edition of this book came into my hands shortly after I worked with this wonderful poet at a seminar for younger poets. A wonderful first collection. So human it hurts. Get it now that it's back in print!

Terrance Hayes has written a book where the poems have bite. These poems are hard-hitting, honest, sincere and yet suffused with "tenderness." "Yummy Suite" is one of the most powerful sequence of poems I have read anywhere that confront what is going on in our urban neighbourhoods today. I also loved "Late," "Goliath" and too many more to name. Here is a writer well worth getting to know. If I may riff on the Reuben Jackson quote that serves as an epilogue, Terrance Hayes' Muscular Music is a book that also "reveals itself" one splendid "black note at a time." Buy this book -- read it aloud and share it with a friend!

Terrance Hayes' first book MUSCULAR MUSIC is the most exciting first book of poetry I've read in years! Do not be fooled as Mr. Hayes lures you into his seemingly kooky world of Fat Albert, Shaft, and Fred Sanford. His accute eye and ear for the stuff of pop culture soon zooms in on tough stuff--race, violence, broken families. My favorite poem in the book "Goliath Poem" ends "We listened to rain like the sound of a big man's tears,/the sound God made before the Word or Light,/And the moon curved above us like an ear."Hayes combines wit and tenderness throughout this book making it truly magical to read.

I first became familiar with Mr. Hayes' work, when i saw his poem "Blackbird" in a 1995 double issue of ObsidianII: Black Literature In Review. It appeared opposite a poem I publshed in the journal. Every poem in Muscular Music, is a snapshot about African American life, and sings a song of america: "Late," "Goliath," "Something For Marvin," "Blackbird," "The Yummy Suite," " What I am..." The Black experience is all in here... I was laughing my ass off at " I want to be fat" and I'm a big guy.Expect Terrence Hayes to be a major poet in the literary canon.

The book showed up in a timely fashion and was brand new, just like it said online.

This book is a true combination of the elements that give meaning to life. From the soul-moving compilation, "Yummy Suite" and "Something for Marvin" to the cries for peace found in "Some Luminous Distress", the resounding message of this book is love. Mr. Hayes has truly made his mark in the poetry field with this soul-stirring mixture of strength, laughter, and truth. Look Out World! Mr. Hayes is a poetry force to be reckoned with.