From To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight, which was published in September by Wave Books. Hayes’s most recent collection of poetry, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, was published this year by Penguin Books. Knight (1931–1991) was a poet who composed his first collection, Poems from Prison, over the course of eight years in Indiana State Prison.
One day Mary Karr sort of appeared along my path like a brush fire. She’s incendiary, combustible, she’s a walking flame. She’ll light up the whole…