A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prize-nominated author of "American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin". Since the release of his first book, "Muscular Music", in 1999, Terrance Hayes has been one of America's most exciting and innovative poets, earning acclaim for his witty, modern poems and his art of turning language into music. In "So to Speak", his seventh collection, a frog sings to overcome its fear of birds, cats exchange jokes in the Jim Crow era, and a father addresses his daughter. In lyrical parables, folk sonnets, quarantine quartets, and pictorial "do-it-yourself" sestinas, Bob Ross paints your portrait, green beans shine in Lil Wayne's mouth, and eulogies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amidst a pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the often perplexing circumstances of the present, as Hayes transforms music into language and language into music.