Robert Hayden faced in the mid twentieth century the dilemma that Countee Cullen, one of his literary mentors, had faced during the Harlem Renaissance. Hayden and Cullen were both black, both poets, both very much desirous of being known by their...

Even though Robert Hayden himself considered it an irrelevant consideration for the evaluation of his work, he is still known primarily as a black poet, and the subjects of many of his poems make use of his experience as a black American. But he stands...

Even though Robert Hayden himself considered it a secondary consideration for the evaluation of his work, he is still known primarily as a black poet, and the subjects of many of his poems make use of his heritage and experience as a black American....

The theme and variations of the works of Robert Hayden, an African American poet, were discussed in an exchange of correspondences between Harryette Mullen and Stephen Yenser. Hayden has been recognized as a writer of, among other things, black life and racism. Hayden's capacity...

We'll go and find them. We'll go and ask them for your name again. --Robert Hayden "'Mystery Boy' Looks for Kin in Nashville" A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric...

Offered the chance that all selections offer, to expunge, silently, the errors and excesses of early work, Robert Hayden has retained [in Angle of Ascent] all but two of the poems which formed his 1966 Selected Poems. This is a poet secure about the past, and the past work. That work, continued here by eight new poems and the bulk of two interim volumes, has shifted its emphasis, gradually, from narrative to symbolism. The earlier poems, heavily dependent on story, have broken down now entirely into words, ...

[American Journal] is characteristically spare and lyrical. Hayden chooses his words with more care than most poets use, and there is also a kind of formal ghost hovering behind his lines, so that his free-verse stanzas seem almost to have resolved themselves into something more traditional. Their holding back is what gives them their charm, however. (p. 87) What is most pleasing about his work is the delicacy and care with which he takes the common tongue, including nicknames and slang, and manages to plac...

Hayden is a poet of many voices, using varieties of ironic black folk speech, and a spare, ebullient poetic diction, to grip and chill his readers. He draws characters of stark vividness as he transmutes cardinal points and commonplaces of history into dramatic action and symbol. The slender, potent American Journal is well named. For here we peruse, at close range, portions of America's visible (public, documented) and—to use Octavio Paz's term—"invisible history."...