Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Terrance Hayes’ "Liner Notes to an Imaginary Playlist" is a richly intertextual meditation on music, memory, and cultural history, blending poetic reflection with the structural conceit of an annotated mixtape. The poem is structured as a list of fictional songs, each accompanied by a short commentary that reads like an impassioned and deeply personal album review. Through this form, Hayes creates an imaginative space where musical history, social commentary, and personal nostalgia intertwine, allowing music to serve as both an archive and an emotional language.

The playlist begins with "Wind Solo" by The Felonious Monks from Silense (1956). The name is an obvious pun on Thelonious Monk, and the song’s title hints at a jazz improvisation, a saxophone solo “high on something” that moves beyond the boundaries of conventional melody. The reference to “1945, after everyone got hip to the blues” suggests that this is an era when bebop was redefining jazz, replacing swing’s broad accessibility with something more cerebral and technically demanding. Hayes imagines the album cover as depicting the contours of the saxophonist’s body, evoking the way jazz musicians sculpt sound through breath and movement. The “dangerous language” of the music is something universally comprehensible, even for those who cannot “read” it in the traditional sense. This establishes one of the poem’s central themes: the ineffable power of music to transcend words, to convey meaning in ways that speech cannot.

The next track, "The DJ’s PJs" by SGP (the Stank Gangsta Prankstas) from Loot the Joker (1992), shifts from jazz to hip-hop, specifically the materialistic excess of early ’90s rap. The colors here are loud: “shell-toe sneakers and warm-ups dyed the hottest red I ever saw.” Hayes plays with the aesthetic of conspicuous wealth, describing the fantasy of “shampooing in Benjamins.” The song reflects the aspirational dreams of young Black men in an America that offers few avenues out of poverty beyond entertainment or crime. The reference to “the mint spewing greenbacks” positions rap music as a means of escaping the ghetto, though the irony is clear—money, in this world, is fleeting, and even “one hit” can turn a pauper into a mystic. The song carries the ghostly echo of disillusionment, underscored by the sound of someone “tipping a bottle” at the end.

From hip-hop, Hayes pivots to classical-influenced jazz with "Mood Etude #5" by Fred Washington Sr. from Blassics (1985). The song, with its fusion of violins, harps, and jazz reeds, represents a collision of musical traditions. Hayes imagines Bach, Keats, and a jazz musician from the Carolina coast all speaking through the same musical lexicon. The multiple references—Bach, Amen, shambles—suggest a lineage of suffering and transcendence, a way of understanding Black musical genius as something born from struggle, yet capable of sublime beauty. The speculative questions—What if Keats heard jazz? What if Bach heard the blues?—imply that music, like poetry, exists beyond time, capable of rewriting history through sound.

The fourth track, "Metal Face" by Glad Battle Wounds from New Battle (2004), shifts into the realm of protest music. The reference to a previous album, Empty (MT), suggests a tradition of nihilistic or war-weary music. The imagery of a soldier’s coat of medals, newsreels of “tanks crushing corpses,” and “the battle for hearts and minds” evoke the empty rhetoric of modern warfare, where heroism is manufactured alongside destruction. The song critiques the cycles of war and propaganda, a theme Hayes has explored in other poems.

"Oh, You" by Marvin & the Gay Ghosts from Baby, Don’t Won’t (1987) introduces a more intimate tone. The title plays on Marvin Gaye’s name, and the phrase “Gay Ghosts” suggests both spectral longing and the artist’s tragic legacy. This song is tied to personal memory—Hayes describes waking up to it on repeat, his mouth filled with “the meat of the bitter-Sweet.” Music becomes an extension of desire and loss, capable of recreating love but never restoring it. The song’s slow, moaning quality mirrors how certain love songs remain embedded in the psyche, haunting the listener even after the romance has ended.

The final track, "Mythic Blues" by Big Bruise Guitar from The Devil’s Angel (1924), takes the reader back to the Delta blues tradition. The song’s warning—“If you’re happy, skip this one”—immediately signals its emotional gravity. Unlike the earlier tracks, which carry an air of bravado or protest, this is a song that forces the listener to sit with their own sorrow. The phrase “Saltwater is all a listener can reap” suggests that the blues are both a source of catharsis and a reminder of pain. The final image, of reeds vibrating in the body, reinforces music’s ability to resonate physically, to embody emotion in ways words cannot.

By the end, the poem itself has become a kind of song—its refrain, “Sometimes the noise gives up its code / And the music is better at saying what I mean to say,” encapsulates the entire purpose of this imagined playlist. Hayes suggests that music has a unique capacity to articulate the complexities of history, pain, joy, and identity. Words alone fail, but in the vibrations of jazz, hip-hop, classical, blues, and protest music, something essential is preserved.

"Liner Notes to an Imaginary Playlist" is more than a fictional tracklist—it is a reflection on how music carries cultural memory, how sound can convey what language struggles to express. The invented artists and albums mirror real historical movements, blending authenticity with invention to suggest that even if these songs never existed, they could have. And, perhaps, in some deeper way, they do exist, stored in the collective consciousness of those who understand that music, at its core, is a form of history, survival, and truth.

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