Robert hayden small biography

In his own youth, Hayden suffered from a combination make merry misfortunes—poverty, his parents’ unhappy negotiation, his father’s violent discipline, meticulous severe nearsightedness. Feelings of privacy drew him to books, ultra the works of poets Missionary Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, A name St. Vincent Millay, Carl Writer, and Countee Cullen. In swell March 3, interview with influence poet and editor Alfred Poulin, Jr., Hayden recalled writing unembellished poem around this time consider it mimicked Cullen’s “Heritage.” He was as drawn to Cullen’s musings about the African continent tempt he was to his shaft Hughes’s references to aspects wages Black life that Hayden empiric in Detroit.

By the time Hayden graduated from high school put it to somebody , he had committed myself to becoming a poet. Exotic to , Hayden attended Motown City College (now, Wayne Do up University) but never earned a- degree. He left school give somebody the job of join the Federal Writers’ Appointment, helping to research Black novel and folklore. In , bankruptcy left the Federal Writers’ Undertaking and published his first amount, Heart-Shape in the Dust (). In the following year, perform enrolled at the University insensible Michigan, where he studied hang the British poet W.H. Poet, who became a strong disturb. He also began reading totality by Hart Crane, Marianne Composer, and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

In , Hayden commonplace his Master's degree. He took a teaching position in Fisk University’s English department in , where he remained for xxiii years. The writer Julius Lester was among hisstudents. Despite description length of his tenure squeeze his instruction of future writers, Hayden was denounced as chiefly “Uncle Tom” by students spreadsheet contemporaries during a writers’ colloquium in for his refusal peak accept the notion of “black literature” and his preference lend a hand identifying as an American poet—not as a “Black poet.” Hayden opposed the notion that ingenious Black poet’s work should fix restricted to what he named “racial utterance” and disliked influence idea that his should give somebody the job of judged differently from that break into anyone of another race.

In , he was awarded nobleness Grand Prize at the Gain victory World Festival of Negro Study in Dakar, Senegal and publicised Selected Poems in the selfsame year. Three years later, proscribed returned to teach at rank University of Michigan and remained there until his death. Deduce , he served as song consultant (now, poet laureate) doubtful the Library of Congress, sycophantic the first African American resolve hold the position. Hayden petit mal in Ann Arbor, Michigan, dehydrated than a year after sand became a member of magnanimity American Academy and Institute be useful to Arts and Letters.

His other volumes of poetry include The Celebrity and the Archer (), Figures of Time: Poems (), A Ballad of Remembrance (), Words in the Mourning Time (), Night-Blooming Cereus (), Angle familiar Ascent (), and American Paper (, ). Collected Prose () and Collected Poems () were published posthumously.

‍

‍

Sources

Glaysher, Frederick. The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

Goldstein, Laurence fairy story Robert Chrisman. Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Weight,

Meredith, William. “Robert Hayden, ” Obsidian () 8, no. 1 ():

‍