The Blue Terrance

Terrance Hayes has described the metaphor as a “gesture of empathy…always trying to connect with something else” (Sy-Quia, Stephanie. “‘I Think of Metaphor as a Gesture of Empathy’: An Interview with Terrance Hayes.” Review31). To build this network of connections with the reader, the poet uses metaphors very frequently, as can be seen in “The Blue Terrance.” The poem’s title itself can be considered a metaphor for the poet’s melancholy state or persona, and the poem invites implicit comparison to a blues song. Trying to regain lost time is compared to subtracting the losses; in math, two negatives (subtract and loss) denote a positive. Thus, attempting to regain time to retrieve innocence only makes the poet feel weighed down by his memories. The mathematical metaphors continue with the image of the chalked crosses, the teacher’s toe ring, the matchbox, and the round garter belt.

The speaker’s identification with the blues is so strong he compares himself to “nothing / but a blue song in a busted speaker” (Lines 18-19). He has become the song, as well as nothing more than a song in an enclosed, confined space. The metaphor simultaneously conveys the lightness of music and the confinement of music struggling to escape. The image of something trying to escape a box, a bird, wind, or song in a box is a recurrent motif in Hayes’s poems and represents the self, struggling to free itself through chosen or imposed formal constraints. The metaphor of the high-strung kite and the deflated balloon describes the extremes of the poet’s joy and despair. It also ties in with the continuing metaphor and song and blues music, since the song rises and falls. The image of a soaring kite evokes the idea of rising notes, while the gutted balloon conjures up a guttural, bass sound. Thus, the poem’s dense system of metaphors builds up its theme of the implacable, multifaceted love and the complex nature of existence, identity, and love.