The New Anthology of American Poetry: Vol. III: Postmodernisms 1950-Present

ROBERT HAYDEN

Ø Robert Hayden 64 Americans, to prepare for a war that Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 prophesied. This poem can be examined in relationship to other poems that reflect on World War II and its context, such as H. T. Tsiang’s “Shantung,” Richard Eberhart’s “The Fury of Aerial Bombardment,” and internment camp poetry in Volume Two as well as the poetry of Randall Jarrell and Mitsuye Yamada in this volume. ROBERT HAYDEN 1913–1980 Robert hayden was a master of understatement and implication, and his poetry is noted for its subtle, erudite, and nuanced exploration of the present and past of African-American culture. His work often focuses on individuals whose lives were shaped by their cultural inheritance, as in his sensitive “The Ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield,” a narrative of the life and loves of his adoptive mother. He was also a master of differing voices, as in his “Night, Death, Mississippi,” which we hear through the voices of three generations of a white supremacist family who derive pleasure from the mutilation and murder of African-American men. Perhaps his most famous poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” is a delicate, almost nostalgic evocation of a family environment that had made his early years deeply traumatic. Born Asa Sheffey in Detroit in 1913, Hayden was adopted—though never formally—by Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden, and thereafter he assumed his adoptive father’s surname. Hayden endured a difficult childhood marked by a contentious relationship between his foster parents and by frequent beatings from his foster father. However, he listened with fascination to the African-American stories and folktales told him by his foster mother. An avid reader, Hayden attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University), leaving without a degree in 1936 to research black history and culture for the Federal Writers’ Project. In 1940, Hayden married Erma Inez Morris, a talented musician. They had one child. Between 1941 and 1945, Hayden earned a BA and MA from the University of Michigan, where he studied with the British poet W. H. Auden. Under Auden’s influence, according to Arnold Rampersand, Hayden sought to write “a modernist poetry of technical and meditative complexity , in which judicious erudition and imagination, rather than pseudo-folk simplicity, or didacticism, were vital elements.” Hayden championed, stated Rampersand, “an art free of crude propaganda and yet engaged with the realities Night, Death, Mississippi Ø 65 of black life in America.” Moreover, influenced by his wife, Hayden abandoned the Baptist religion of his childhood and embraced the Baha’i faith. Hayden began teaching at the historically black Fisk University in 1946, returning to teach at the University of Michigan in 1969. Hayden served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (later termed the Poet Laureate) from 1976 to 1978. He died of cancer in 1980. further reading John Hatcher. From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1984. Robert Hayden. Collected Poems. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. New York: Liveright, 1985. — — — —. Collected Prose. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984. Night, Death, Mississippi I A quavering cry. Screech-owl? Or one of them? The old man in his reek and gauntness laughs— one of them, I bet— and turns out the kitchen lamp, limping to the porch to listen in the windowless night. Be there with Boy and the rest if I was well again. Time was. Time was. White robes like moonlight1 In the sweetgum dark. Unbucked that one then and him squealing bloody Jesus as we cut it off. Time was. A cry? A cry all right. 1. Traditional garb of the Ku Klux Klan. Ø Robert Hayden 66 1. Westerfield’s father was a slaveholder who freed her mother after impregnating her. 2. Confederate capitulation, ending the Civil War. He hawks and spits, fevered as by groinfire. Have us a bottle, Boy and me— he’s earned him a bottle— when he gets home. II Then we beat them, he said, beat them till our arms was tired and the big old chains messy and red. O Jesus burning on the lily cross Christ, it was better than hunting bear which don’t know why you want him dead. O night, rawhead and bloodybones night You kids fetch Paw some water now so’s he can wash that blood off him, she said...