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American Journal
Book by Hayden, Robert
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1982
1 person is currently reading
89 people want to read
About the author
Robert Hayden
58 books82 followersRobert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, educator. He was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1976.
Hayden was elected to the American Academy of Poets in 1975. From 1976 - 1978, Hayden was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the first African American holder of that post), the position which in 1985 became the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Hayden's most famous and most anthologized poem is Those Winter Sundays[citation needed], which deals with the memory of fatherly love and loneliness.
Other famed poems include The Whipping (which is about a small boy being severely punished for some undetermined offense), Middle Passage (inspired by the events surrounding the United States v. The Amistad affair), Runagate, Runagate, and Frederick Douglass.
Hayden’s influences included Wylie, Cullen, Dunbar, Hughes, Bontemps, Keats, Auden and Yeats. Hayden’s work often addressed the plight of African Americans, usually using his former home of Paradise Valley slum as a backdrop, as he does in the poem Heart-Shape in the Dust. Hayden’s work made ready use of black vernacular and folk speech. Hayden wrote political poetry as well, including a sequence on the Vietnam War.
On the first poem of the sequence, he said, “I was trying to convey the idea that the horrors of the war became a kind of presence, and they were with you in the most personal and intimate activity, having your meals and so on. Everything was touched by the horror and the brutality and criminality of war. I feel that's one of the best of the poems.
Hayden was elected to the American Academy of Poets in 1975. From 1976 - 1978, Hayden was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the first African American holder of that post), the position which in 1985 became the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Hayden's most famous and most anthologized poem is Those Winter Sundays[citation needed], which deals with the memory of fatherly love and loneliness.
Other famed poems include The Whipping (which is about a small boy being severely punished for some undetermined offense), Middle Passage (inspired by the events surrounding the United States v. The Amistad affair), Runagate, Runagate, and Frederick Douglass.
Hayden’s influences included Wylie, Cullen, Dunbar, Hughes, Bontemps, Keats, Auden and Yeats. Hayden’s work often addressed the plight of African Americans, usually using his former home of Paradise Valley slum as a backdrop, as he does in the poem Heart-Shape in the Dust. Hayden’s work made ready use of black vernacular and folk speech. Hayden wrote political poetry as well, including a sequence on the Vietnam War.
On the first poem of the sequence, he said, “I was trying to convey the idea that the horrors of the war became a kind of presence, and they were with you in the most personal and intimate activity, having your meals and so on. Everything was touched by the horror and the brutality and criminality of war. I feel that's one of the best of the poems.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 27, 2025
from The Islands
Jamaican Cynthie, called alien by dese lazy
islanders--wo'k hahd, treated bad,
oh, mahn, I tellin you. She's full
of raucous anger. Nevertheless brings gifts of
scarlet hibiscus when she comes to clean,
white fragrant spider-lilies too sometimes.
The roofless walls, the tidy ruins
of a sugar mill. More than cane
was crushed. But I am tired today
of history, its patina'd clichés
of endless evil.
Hayden's final collection of verse returns to the examinations and poetic craft which pervaded his earlier collections. The work is more specific, less abstract. With some exceptions, I enjoyed this volume immensely.
What do I mean "some exceptions?" Well, there is an unsettling uptick in descriptions of "sexual prowess," which, for me, seem latched onto the poems rather crudely. The same thing happened with W.B. Yeats in his later poetry (I'm thinking of his "Crazy Jane" series). It's like old poets suddenly decide to write about sex. For instance, Hayden writes about Matthew Hensen (called Miy Paluk--"The Kind One"--by Greenlandic peoples), the African-American who partnered with Robert Peary in reaching the north pole in 1909. In the first of three sections of verse, we get this:
he who returned to us
bringing festive speech
Miypaluk hunter of seal
and walrus and bear
and who more skilled
at building sledge
and igloo ay-ee
the handler of dogs
the pleaser of girls
Miypaluk who came from the strange-
ness beyond the ice
Hayden is definitely upping the testosterone here: Henson hunts bear, handles dogs, and pleases the "girls." What? Before we can chalk this up to a momentary lapse of poetic judgement, we encounter these lines from the final section of "The Snow Lamp," where Hayden describes the psychological toll Peary and Hensen experienced while living in the Arctic:
We struggle against the wish to die.
We use the Eskimo women to satiety, by this act
alone knowing ourselves men, not ghosts. We have
cabin fever. We quarrel with one another over
the women, grow vicious (as the childish Eskimos
do not). We are verminous. We stink like Eskimos.
We fight our wish to die.
Yep: Manly men screwing the Eskimo women and being more than a tad racist describing it. Not Hayden's finest work by a long-shot.
All in all, there's enough profundity and insight in these lines to warrant a careful, repeated reading. Hayden may wobble off the rails at times, but, in general, a majority of his poetry is well-crafted and possesses a lot of depth.
Killing the Calves
Threatened by abundance, the ranchers
with tightfaced calculation
throw the bawling calves into a ditch and
shoot them in order to fatten the belly of cost.
The terror of the squandered calves mingles
with the terrible agony of the starving
whom their dying will not save.
Of course, the killing is "quick and clean";
and though there is no comparison reminds us
nonetheless--men women children
forced like superfluous animals
into a pit and less than cattle
in warcrazed eyes like crazed cattle slaughtered.
Jamaican Cynthie, called alien by dese lazy
islanders--wo'k hahd, treated bad,
oh, mahn, I tellin you. She's full
of raucous anger. Nevertheless brings gifts of
scarlet hibiscus when she comes to clean,
white fragrant spider-lilies too sometimes.
The roofless walls, the tidy ruins
of a sugar mill. More than cane
was crushed. But I am tired today
of history, its patina'd clichés
of endless evil.
Hayden's final collection of verse returns to the examinations and poetic craft which pervaded his earlier collections. The work is more specific, less abstract. With some exceptions, I enjoyed this volume immensely.
What do I mean "some exceptions?" Well, there is an unsettling uptick in descriptions of "sexual prowess," which, for me, seem latched onto the poems rather crudely. The same thing happened with W.B. Yeats in his later poetry (I'm thinking of his "Crazy Jane" series). It's like old poets suddenly decide to write about sex. For instance, Hayden writes about Matthew Hensen (called Miy Paluk--"The Kind One"--by Greenlandic peoples), the African-American who partnered with Robert Peary in reaching the north pole in 1909. In the first of three sections of verse, we get this:
he who returned to us
bringing festive speech
Miypaluk hunter of seal
and walrus and bear
and who more skilled
at building sledge
and igloo ay-ee
the handler of dogs
the pleaser of girls
Miypaluk who came from the strange-
ness beyond the ice
Hayden is definitely upping the testosterone here: Henson hunts bear, handles dogs, and pleases the "girls." What? Before we can chalk this up to a momentary lapse of poetic judgement, we encounter these lines from the final section of "The Snow Lamp," where Hayden describes the psychological toll Peary and Hensen experienced while living in the Arctic:
We struggle against the wish to die.
We use the Eskimo women to satiety, by this act
alone knowing ourselves men, not ghosts. We have
cabin fever. We quarrel with one another over
the women, grow vicious (as the childish Eskimos
do not). We are verminous. We stink like Eskimos.
We fight our wish to die.
Yep: Manly men screwing the Eskimo women and being more than a tad racist describing it. Not Hayden's finest work by a long-shot.
All in all, there's enough profundity and insight in these lines to warrant a careful, repeated reading. Hayden may wobble off the rails at times, but, in general, a majority of his poetry is well-crafted and possesses a lot of depth.
Killing the Calves
Threatened by abundance, the ranchers
with tightfaced calculation
throw the bawling calves into a ditch and
shoot them in order to fatten the belly of cost.
The terror of the squandered calves mingles
with the terrible agony of the starving
whom their dying will not save.
Of course, the killing is "quick and clean";
and though there is no comparison reminds us
nonetheless--men women children
forced like superfluous animals
into a pit and less than cattle
in warcrazed eyes like crazed cattle slaughtered.
Displaying 1 of 1 review