A Girl in the Box
Wind in the Box, Terrance Hayes’s third book of poetry, is mainly about how heritage, race, and spirituality play a part in shaping a person’s identity. The poems in Wind in a Box cover a wide variety of topics The poems in this book cover a vast array of topics and emotions, but they all have one thing in common, they all are colored by Terrance Haye’s experiences and his perception of the world. In the two poems, “Girl in the Woods” and “Wind in the Box”, Terrance Hayes tells the story of two victims of traumatic experiences and their response to that experience. In the first poem, “Girl in the Woods”, the story teller describes the story of a girl who catches a ride home with some of her friends and ends up getting raped. After being raped, the girl is brought home and does nothing to her attackers. In the second poem, “Wind in the Box”, the speaker of the poem contemplates how he feels after killing someone that wronged him. Both poems make references to traumatic experiences. These two poems are different because of the way that the subject of the poem reacts; in the first poem the subject takes no action against her attackers while in the second poem the subject kills his enemy. Both poems have a clear meaning: while traumatic experiences happen in life, different people respond very differently.

Hayes is a poet that has the great talent of conveying the emotions from a traumatic experience very effectively. He paints the picture of the experience using many different tools in his poetry. These tools include Hayes’ theme that different people respond to situations differently is echoed not only in these two poems, but in the many of the poems that are in Wind in the Box. For example, in “IV. RSVP’, Hayes talks about how different people respond to Michael Jackson, his music, and the allegations against him. Also, in his poem “Touch”, which is from his earlier book Hip Logic, Hayes explains how officers respond to young black boys playing touch football in the dark. The main theme of this poem is racism, but it still points out the officers’ response to them. Hayes is a poet who has the ability to make the reader not only feel the experience, but also to get into the mind frame of the person experiencing the event.

You have a really good setup for your paper. Some ideas to make it longer are: elaborate on how he uses those poems to communicate his message(like use specific lines), go into detail about his life growing up(if you can find info) and how that effected his works, and also add a conclusion paragraph that restates and sums up your paper. –Samantha Stewart
-Grace Atwell