Terrance Hayes is an American poet and won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2010. The poem is named “Probably twilight makes blackness darkness dangerous.” The poem was released and posted in September of 2017. In the “Probably twilight makes blackness darkness dangerous,” Terrance Hayes centered the poem around injustices of black identifying individuals, and the problems they face throughout their lifetime and everyday encounters.
The persona/speaker is certainly not an individual that is not black or African American. We know this because only people who have experienced what is being said in the poem can be able to vividly explain the injustices that are going on. The speaker would most likely be a black man rather than a black woman, only because of the content that they provided in the poem. The first evidence of the probability that it is a black man is the list of cities provided in the poem are places that black men were targeted by police, and were later murdered. Another possible intake for the speaker could be a black woman. The black women persona could possibly show the outside look of the black men that were victims of injustices. I think the best choice for the speaker would be a black woman that is explaining the injustices in the third person due to most of them also being relatable to black women also.
I believe the scene is certainly not just a casual conversational piece, but I also believe that the piece could be set up in a manner where they are having a political conversation with another individual. The scene could probably be set up in a speech setting during a protest and he could be talking to the police. The possibility of the scene being a conversational standpoint is very unlikely. I think the best choice would be the protest scene.
Although the poem does not explicitly say the audience that it is tailored too, we certainly know that the poem is not intended for black people that are active in the fight for justice. I believe this because of line ten, it states “you won’t admit it.” If the poem were tailored to people that were experienced on the struggles that black individuals face, then they wouldn’t have to state that they wouldn’t admit that the deadly encounters were real. The probability of it being a black audience would be very slim and repetitive because they already know what happens in their everyday life. I think the best choice is an audience that is ignorant or chooses not to acknowledges the struggles that these individuals face.
I certainly believe that the purpose of this poem is to warn and educate people that are not normally exposed to this type of lifestyle. A probability would be that they want it to be storytelling to explain how encounters become deadly and how they are provoked because of the color of their skin. The possibilities of purpose are very limited to black people, and the comparison to the dark, black, and dangerous. The choice I chose that I think fits the purpose the best would be to explain and educate the everyday encounters that black individuals go through.
In the “Probably twilight makes blackness darkness dangerous,” the purpose tends to affect scene and audience. The poem centers around injustices of black identifying individuals and the problems they face throughout their lifetime and everyday encounters, but those individuals will not likely want to be pounded with information that they already experience.