Sonnets for a Missing Key

Author of the instant national bestsellers, James and Erasure—the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film American Fiction—Percival Everett is diving back into poetry with his spellbinding new collection, Sonnets for a Missing Key.

Inspired by the Preludes of Chopin and the piano solos of Art Tatum, these sonnets leap and turn through philosophical musings accrued across a life well lived, with inventive language, crystalline imagery, and turns of phrase that lift off the page and glimmer. Everett’s sonnets soar through the musical scale, from A Minor to A Major, exploring relationships, spirituality, compassion, despair, and how the stories we tell ourselves shape our realities.

Everett continuously defies convention with every creative expression and brings his literary audacity back to his poetic roots with this, his sixth collection with Red Hen Press. 

Sonnets for a Missing Key is a mesmerizing feat of language that reinforces Percival Everett as one of the great wordsmiths of the century.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Your favorite writer’s writer, Percival Everett, is now everyone’s fave thanks to American Fiction, the Oscar-nominated film adaptation of his book Erasure. His latest, a lyrical book of must-read sonnets, remixes Chopin and Tatum in startling, elegiac new shapes.”
 —Ryan Coleman, Entertainment Weekly

“…this is a book for both the poetry lover and the musician in your life, or for you, if you’ve given up on poetry for some reason, or never listened to Art Tatum, or need to find a good reason to listen to him again. It’s no wonder that a fellow writer has written, “Percival Everett is a genre.” Unto himself.”
—Larry Wilson, Pasadena Star-News

“Percival Everett is a genre.”
—Kiese Laymon⁠, author of Long Division and MacArthur Fellowship Grantee

“I feel very deeply that he is one of the most profoundly talented writers of all time.”
—Robin Coste Lewis, author of Voyage of the Sable Venus and National Book Award for Poetry Winner

“Percival Everett’s body of work has been called many things—experimental, idiosyncratic, ‘gleefully unhinged’—and perhaps most frequently, prolific.”
—Lisa Tolin, Editorial Director at PEN America