Saturday, August 26, 2006

Saturday August 26th, 2006 - Noon

so i left my house on friday evening with the express purpose of going to get terrance hayes' new collection, "wind in a box". i also managed to cop major jackson's new collection "hoops", hayes' previous collection "hip logic" and brigit peegen kelly's "song".

let me say this about that. don't walk. run!! and go get all these collections if they aren't already on yr shelves. i hadn't embarked upon a "spree" like this for a long while (together with a new notebook and the gnarls barkeley joint - $100) and i don't regret a penny of it.

hayes' "wind in a box" is testimony to a voice that i think we'll mention in the same breath as 'neruda', when it's all said and done. jackson's "hoops" is not to be outdone though, incredible as that seems, and eventually we'll mention him in the same breath as 'hughes' and 'hayden'.

hayes' lyricism is so effortless and so in the vain of unpretentious, street-wise, savant, that you feel drawn into something entirely magical and crunk at the same time (yeah i said it!). and the endings! the endings! nothing of either hayes or jackson's endings is ever easy, ever predictable. everything has just the sort of flourish or flatline one thinks is needed to turn the screw in your brain or the knife in your gut just then, and if my ankle wasn't iced down and elevated right now i'd actually go get the book and hit you with a few choice lines, but check back next week if you haven't copped it by then.

in fact, kelly's 1994 collection wasn't one i had planned on picking up on friday. i saw the book and because i knew the title poem, i checked it out, and ending after ending after ending was breathtaking and i had to get that too.

after my ankle is un-iced, you might get some of those lines too but an evening spent at the minor-league ball-park in coney island, followed by russian food, vodka, and running sprints on the boardwalk against ove, in heavy boots with an ankle already trying to recover from a sprain, was just too much.

so, i'm headed to the gym now and then to lincoln center, because i perform there this afternoon, and that's how i roll.

one,

r