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Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=200

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Robert Hayden including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hayden/hayden.htm

This link connects you to the Modern American Poetry site, edited by Professor Cary Nelson at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Here you will find an exhibit of secondary criticism, bibliographic information, and external links on Robert Hayden.

BIOGRAPHY

Robert Hayden was born in the "Paradise Valley" ghetto of Detroit to Ruth and Asa Sheffey who separated after his birth. Adopted by William and Ruth Hayden, the poet grew up in a troubled household filled with what he later described as "chronic angers." Attending Detroit City College until 1936, he then joined the Federal Writer's project where for two years he researched African American history and folklore. Hayden married Erma Morris in 1940, which was also the year of his first publication Heart-Shape in the Dust. The following year he attended the University of Michigan where he studied with the modernist poet W. H. Auden. Graduating in 1942, Hayden remained there until 1946 when he joined the faculty of Fisk University where he went on to enjoy a twenty-three year career, publishing such major volumes as The Lion and the Archer (1948), Figures of Time: Poems (1955), Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), Angle of Ascent (1975), American Journal 1978, 1982), and his posthumous Collected Poems (1985). "His poetry," according to critic Mark A. Sanders, "posits race as a means through which one contemplates the expansive possibilities of language, and the transformative power of art." A master of poetic craft and modernist experimentation, Robert Hayden remains a seminal voice in American literature and his verse spans the course of African American poetics reaching from the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Aesthetic Movement and beyond.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Faulkner, Howard. "'Transformed by Steeps of Flight': The Poetry of Robert Hayden." College Language Association Journal. 21:282-91. 1977.

Fetrow, Fred M. Robert Hayden. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.

Goldstein, Laurence, and Robert Chrisman, Eds. Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Harper, Michael S. "Remembering Robert Hayden." Michigan Quarterly Review. 21 (1): 182-88. 1982.

Potter, Vilma Raskin. "Reconsiderations and Reviews: A Remembrance for Robert Hayden, 1913-1980." Melus. 8(1):51-55. 1981.

Williams, Pontheolla. Robert Hayden: A Critical Analysis of His Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER