A dazzling collection of poems from the T. S. Eliot Prizeshortlisted author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future AssassinSince the publication of his first book Muscular Music in 1999 Terrance Hayes has been one of Americas most exciting and innovative poets winning acclaim for his sly twisting jazzy poems and his mastery of emotive restless wordplay.In So to Speak his seventh collection a tree frog sings to overcome its fear of birds talking cats tell jokes in the Jim Crow South and a father addresses his daughter. In lyric fables folk sonnets quarantine quatrains and ekphrastic doityourself sestinas Bob Ross paints your portrait green beans bling in the mouth of Lil Wayne and elegies for the late David Berman and George Floyd unfold amid the pandemic. These poems lyrically capture the oftenincomprehensible predicaments of the present as Hayes shapes music into language and language into music.