Terrance Hayes begins and ends American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin with quotations from the poet Wanda Coleman, who initially coined the term “American sonnet.” Coleman recast the traditional European form initially developed by Petrarch and Shakespeare, making it more relevant and adaptable to late-20th century American writers. Her 14-line poems favored internal over end rhyme and returned to the idea of a sonnet as a “little song,” a piece with a sense of musicality and rhythm. Hayes’s American sonnets use refrains, alliterative patterns, internal rhyme as they evoke the sense of improvisation Coleman brought to her American sonnets.

Hayes explores and expands the idea of formal poetry in his other works. He invented the “golden shovel” form as part of a tribute to poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Using Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” as its source, Hayes’s poem “The Golden Shovel” takes its title from Brooks’s epigraph and ends each line with successive words from “We Real Cool” until that entire poem repeats twice within Hayes’s.

For Hayes, form builds connection with, pays tribute to, and continues the lineage of other poets. It can demonstrate individual virtuosity or language’s power and resilience.