50 Quotes by Terrance Hayes

"I became a poet in Pittsburgh. When I lived in the South, I was a basketball player and primarily a jock. An English teacher essentially suggested that I send the poems that I'd been writing - really just for him - to a few programs, so that when I wound up in Pittsburgh, it's where I figured out that I could actually be a poet."

"Pittsburgh was the first chance to be in a classroom with other writers, to have conversations with other writers. In fact, after graduate school, I lived in Japan, Ohio and New Orleans, and only upon leaving Pittsburgh did I see what a special community it was for poets, so I was eager to come back. It's a strong arts community across the board."

"Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath."

"The thing that I've decided is, I don't want to be invisible, but I'd like to be transparent. I want people to see what I'm thinking and see through me."

"When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'"

"I always turn to Frank O'Hara and David Berman's 'Actual Air,' which came out in 1999. He's a poet I haven't tired of."

"The summer I got to Pittsburgh for graduate school, I house-sat for a Ph.D. student who had a lot of books. One of the books that I found was 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov. That was eye opening. I've probably read it every other year since my 20s."

"When I was in high school, I remember writing a research paper, and the teacher said I should write about Langston Hughes. I felt as if I was the only black dude who didn't like Langston Hughes. He didn't seem as dark and layered as someone like Flannery O'Connor."

"Poets are like the decathletes of literature."

"When I applied for grad school, I did not specify genre. I said I wanted an MFA in Creative Writing. I was so cute and stupid! The admissions committee at Pitt decided to put me in poetry."