February 6: Dream a Lot, Terrance Hayes, "Candied Yams"

I dream a lot.  Imagine wild scenarios where I'm suddenly struck with good fortune.  I'm checking my e-mail, and there's a message from a publisher that wants to offer me a book deal.  I'm sitting in my office at school, and the president of the university walks into my office and offers me a full-time, tenured position.  I'm working at the medical office, and somebody with a Swedish accent walks in and tells me I've just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Or it could be something like what happened to poet Terrance Hayes.  Terrance was in a coffee shop with his wife, and his cell phone rang.  It was somebody informing him that he'd been awarded a 2014 MacArthur genius grant.  He will receive $625,000 over the next five years.  He was given the grant because "he is a poet who reflects on race, gender, and family in works marked by formal dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. … In creating works that seamlessly and meaningfully encompass both the historical and the personal, Hayes is extending the possibilities of language and pushing the art of poetry toward places altogether new."  Whatever.

Saint Marty has a Terrance Hayes for you tonight.  The lucky bastard.

Candied Yams

by:  Terrance Hayes

3 boiled whole yams unpeeled and sliced,
into a saucepan
1 stick melted butter
2 big tablespoons nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup brown sugar

1 brown-sugar woman
quietly slices yams
at a wicker table.
She does not melt
into the ruckus of
a rumbling house.
2 boys who never stop
to listen.
Listen. Listen.
She gives each
1 brown yam topped
with marshmallows;
gives each a love
for the impossible;
for the majesty
of soul food;
a love
for remembering.

I want to write
something about that:
the saucepan's infinite scent,
the dip & tenor of tablespoons,
the brown hands blacker
than these scratches I make.
I want to write something
about my mother's yams;
I want to make magic
magic.

Cartoon by a MacArthur genius.  Whatever.