Terrance Hayes' fifth collection of poetry, How to be Drawn, explores how we see and are seen. These new poems charge the formal and emotional versatility that distinguishes Hayes' work with fervent questions of representation. How are the mind, body, and spirit to be truthfully portrayed? How is the self drawn to and drawn by the currents of imagination and reality, history and eternity? While this ambitious book bears the clearest imprint yet of Hayes' background as a visual artist, these poems do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Thus, one poem is written from the perspective of a photographer's camera, while another uses the principal of "blind contour drawing" to contemplate witness and blindness. With each award-winning collection Terrance Hayes has grown more and more adept at creating poetry that is complex yet transparent, urgent yet composed. Haunted by beauty and strangeness, How to be Drawn is a breathtaking achievement. A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award In How to Be Drawn, his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes's background as a visual artist, they do not strive to describe art so much as inhabit it. Thus, one poem contemplates the principle of blind contour drawing while others are inspired by maps, graphs, and assorted artists. The formal and emotional versatilities that distinguish Hayes's award-winning poetry are unified by existential focus. Simultaneously complex and transparent, urgent and composed, How to Be Drawn is a mesmerizing achievement.