5 — Poet Talk about a Poem: "God is an American" by Terrance Hayes

Poet Talk

In the last episode of 2024, Jody and Sanna reflect on the first year of the podcast and their own places in writing community. They also do a close reading of one of their favourite poems: “God is an American” by Terrance Hayes. Together, they investigate beauty’s difficulty and longing’s limits, informed by the wisdom of Audre Lorde, Heather Christle and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha among others.
How is the artist a cultural worker? What constitutes an American poetics? And why, most importantly, was Terrance Hayes labelled “Handsome Mystery Man” on the news in 2021? Tune in and find out.
This month, we're partnering with Arc Poetry Magazine! Learn more about their Poem of the Year contest here. Submit your poems by February 1, 2025.
"God is an American" was first published in Guernica Magazine in 2007 and then in Hayes' fourth collection, Lighthead (Penguin Random House, 2010).
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Cool Stuff Below! 🛍️
📢 Toronto Writers Against the War on Gaza
🗣️ Canlit Responds: Boycott Giller
🚨 No Arms in the Arts
📝 Read Jody’s Counter-Gala speech
💬 Schadenfreude
📙 Where Things Touch by Bahar Orang
📝 Audre Lorde quote from "We Must Learn to Use Our Power”
🎙️ Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's speech at the National Book Awards
📒 America is Not the Heart by Elaine Castillo
📗 America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
📘 Heather Christle quote from The Crying Book
☀️ Nuclear fusion (not fission) at the heart of the sun
📝 "Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide" by Fargo Tbakhi
📸 Terrances Hayes as Handsome Mystery Man on the news

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✨ Poet Talk is independently run, created and produced by Sanna Wani.
♫ Check out the show music in the album Hélice's Awesome Dance Adventure and the creator Komiku on their website.
📲 Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, @talkpoet.

فصول

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Arc Poetry Magazine's Poem of the Year Contest (00:00:25)

3. Sanna's reflections on the podcast (00:01:25)

4. Jody's reflections on the podcast (00:06:04)

5. Community, criticism and organizing (00:10:15)

6. Why "God is an American"? (00:15:06)

7. Jody reads the poem (00:16:31)

8. Initial impressions (00:18:53)

9. Morning poems and titles (00:27:03)

10. What is an American poetics? (00:30:01)

11. Books with "America" in the titles (00:35:15)

12. Returning to the question of the title (00:37:56)

13. The meme of Terrance Hayes (00:47:04)

14. Sanna reads the poem (00:49:15)

15. Final takeaways (00:50:34)

16. Outro (00:55:52)