Annal:2000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in the year 2000. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2000 Kate Tufts winner
- Score: 10.5
The poems in Terrance Hayes’s book, Muscular Music, are atypical of most writers’ first books of poetry. One cannot categorize these poems simply as confessional, narrative, or lyrical. They are all these things at once. They move beyond usual explorations of childhood or family to blend themes and influences that range from Neruda to Coltrane, Fat Albert to Orpheus, John Shaft to Gershwin.
This book gives us an almost Whitmanesque account of an America, and an African American, replete with grace and imperfection. Moreover, it gives us a voice that…
