Terrance Hayes has stolen an afternoon to paint.
As a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and in-demand poet, he works with words all day, so he tries to make time for the soothing, nonverbal language of visual art whenever he can. During a recent phone conversation, he had passed up paperwork and playing ball to tackle a large painting in progress at his home in Pittsburgh.
“In some ways, it’s a way to be quiet,” Hayes confessed. “Everything else I have to do — I have to grade papers, I have to write. But painting is the sort of thing where if I don’t take the time, if I don’t make the time mine, it doesn’t come.”
Hayes has good reason to keep his painting muscles in shape — his original art graces the covers of his three books of poetry, including his latest from Penguin, 2006’s “Wind in a Box.” Though he considers the rigors of poetry and art separate, Hayes appreciates how a visual medium works beyond the reach of language.
“I think of it as a way to get away from verbalizing, from the frustrations and joys that come with trying to put language to music or to emotion,” he explained.
Hayes will read his poems on Thursday as part of the University of Louisville’s Axton Reading Series.
Derek Mong, the university’s current Axton Fellow in poetry, selected Hayes for this year’s series based on his playful approach to writing about identity and popular culture. Mong is a fan of Hayes’ “very moving, strange, inventive forms,” citing a series of poems in his 2002 book “Hip Logic” based on newspaper word jumbles as an example.
“There’s a real sense of gamesmanship about his poems that I find attractive,” Mong said. “I think he’s earned a spot in the young American pantheon of poets.”
Hayes, who starred on the basketball court during his undergrad days at tiny Coker College in South Carolina, is equally versed in literary history, pop music and late-night movies, and all of these influences layer his poems with a unique “hip logic.”
“These days, hip-hop or spoken word would influence me as much as someone like David Bowie or a New Orleans stride piano player,” he said. “I think of my work as a hybrid of a lot of different kinds of sources, which suits me as a restless, curious person.”
This style, which Hayes himself describes as “schizophrenic,” draws from such disparate muses as contemporary sculpture, Mr. T and the movie “Shaft” to explore what fellow poet Tony Hoagland has dubbed “the difficult places of culture and self.”
Hayes’ eclectic approach to culture is also evident in his choice of persona, when he writes poems from the point of view of another person or character. “Wind in a Box” includes poems in the voices of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges and rhyming picture book author Dr. Seuss.
Hayes considers poetry a catch-all form, one that can encompass a wide array of subjects and themes, and he doesn’t exclude material based on a subjective rule of what is considered appropriate.
“I draw on references from my childhood or things that are on my mind, whether that’s Michael Jackson or David Bowie,” he explained. “I like not feeling like [my work] is high brow or low brow, in terms of the cultural references, but that there’s a mix from both.”
The result is a personal and cultural pastiche that is distinctly American, a theme Hayes grapples with in his work. Being engaged with politics, race, identity and history is essential to his understanding of American writing, but he doesn’t limit this engagement to one focus.
“The answer would be the same for what it means to be male, and what it means to be African-American, which are some of the things that come up in my work often,” he said. “Those things, too, are not fixed, they’re always becoming.”
Though he believes the days of a poet like Allen Ginsberg influencing an entire generation are over in America, Hayes isn’t concerned about poetry’s lack of cultural currency.
“In the same way it’s not possible anymore to have an Elvis Presley or a Michael Jackson with far-reaching, boundary-shattering influence,” he said.
“And I think that’s a good thing. You get away from that huge pressure of saying ‘I’m going to write a poem that’s going change everything, that’s going to send people into the streets and end poverty,’ that sort of thing. If culture is one big river, poets are just among the people who are throwing things into that flow, hoping that it resonates with people.”
Hayes will read at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Elaine Chao Auditorium at U.of.L’s Ekstrom Library. The event is free and open to the public. He will also teach a master class in poetry for University of Louisville creative writing students on Friday at 10 a.m. in the Belknap Research Building, which the public is welcome to observe.
