Welcome to our podcast. Today, we explore Terrance Hayes’s poem “Make the Audiobook Before the Book Is Made,” first published in The New Yorker. In these rich verses, Hayes invites us to “stand before a steamy mirror, talking to your reflection,” imagining a book of poetry materializing in the fog. Our breath becomes verse: “lines of poetry” that split, echo, and shift as steam and glass separate us into layers. Throughout a morning routine—smoke drifting while someone showers—the poem reflects on windows and shifting perspectives, as sunlight threads between coupling buildings and collapsing walls. Hayes describes slightly warped mirrors and book jackets that “stretch, squish, and alter” familiar faces, mirroring the elasticity of his poems. Water in the shower hums a strange song, a quiet weeping behind the closed door. By blending reflection, light, and sound, Hayes’s piece transforms the ordinary into a living poem before the book even exists.
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