Collected Poems [Paperback]

Robert Hayden (Author), Frederick Glaysher (Editor), Arnold Rampersad (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

This collection of the work of African American poet Robert Hayden includes "American Journal" which was nominated for the (US) National Book Award.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Akhenaten
American Journal
Approximations
As My Blood Was Drawn
Astronauts
Aunt Jemima Of The Ocean Waves
Baha' U'llah In The Garden Of Ridwan
The Ballad Of Nat Turner
A Ballad Of Remembrance
The Ballad Of Sue Ellen Westerfield
Beginnings
Belsen, Day Of Liberation
Bone-flower Elegy
The Broken Dark
Burly Fading One
Butterfly Piece
Crispus Attucks
Dance The Orange
Dawnbreaker
Day Of The Dead
The Diver
The Dogwood Trees
Double Feature
The Dream
El-hajj Malik El-shabazz
Electrical Storm
Elegies For Paradise Valley
For A Young Artist
Frederick Douglass
Free Fantasia: Tiger Flowers
From The Corpse Woodpiles, From The Ashes
Full Moon
Gulls
Homage To Paul Robeson
Homage To The Empress Of The Blues
Ice Storm
Idol
Incense Of The Lucky Virgin
The Islands
John Brown
Kid
Killing The Calves
Kodachromes Of The Island
La Corrida
Lear Is Gay
Letter
A Letter From Phillis Wheatley
The Lions
Locus
Market
Middle Passage
The Mirages
Monet's Waterlilies
The Moose Wallow
Mountains
Mourning Poem For The Queen Of Sunday
'mystery Boy' Looks For Kin In Nashville
Names
Nefert-iti
Night, Death, Mississippi
The Night-blooming Cereus
O Daedalus, Fly Away Home
October
On Lookout Mountain
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Peacock Room
The Performers
Perseus
A Plague Of Starlings (fisk Campus)
The Point (stonington, Connecticut)
The Prisoners
The Rabbi
The Rag Man
The Return
Richard Hunt's 'arachne'
A Road In Kentucky
Runagate Runagate
Smelt Fishing
Snow
The Snow Lamp, Sels.
Soledad
Sphinx
Stars
Sub Specie Aeternitatis
'summertime And The Living'
The Tattooed Man
Theme And Variation
Theory Of Evil
Those Winter Sundays
Tour 5
Traveling Through Fog
Unidentified Flying Object
Veracruz
The Web
The Wheel
The Whipping
Witch Doctor
Words In The Mourning Time
The Year Of The Child
Zeus Over Redeye
Zinnias
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871401592
• ISBN-13: 978-0871401595
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,557 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What it means to be human, April 21, 2002

By 

Peter Murphy "pembroke9" (Ventnor, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected Poems (Hardcover)

ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980) was the first African-American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now titled the U.S. Poet Laureate. He won numerous prizes and awards during the last decade of his life, including the 1975 Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for "distinguished poetic achievement." Hayden stands out among Twentieth Century American, poets not just for his many literary accomplishments, but for the strong vision of faith that illuminates so much of his work.

In addition to well known poems such as "Those Winter Sundays" and "The Whipping," this anthology contains other equally stirring poems including "Aunt Jemima Of The Ocean Waves" which depicts a conversation with the fat woman from a Coney Island side-show and "Belsen, Day Of Liberation" dedicated to Rosey Pool, the Dutch teacher of Anne Frank and first translator of her famous diary.

While Hayden writes much about African-American history and culture, his poems do not tell the reader what to think or feel. Instead, his carefully crafted verse weaves images that allow the careful reader to move around in some very unusual territory, some beautiful, some uncomfortable. Hayden puts us in the mind of the oppressor in poems like "Middle Passage" about the famous Amistad incident, and "Night, Death, Mississippi" where we eavesdrop on an old Klan member too frail to attend a lynching with his son, of whom he is proud. "Be there with Boy and the rest / if I was well again. / Time was. Time was. / White robes like moonlight / In the sweetgum dark."

Hayden can also be wickedly funny. In "American Journal" written a few years before his death, his narrator is a spy from a distant planet in the galaxy who reports back to his fellow superiors about "this baffling multi people extremes and variegations their noise restlessness their almost frightening energy."

In addition to poems about childhood, society, and race, Hayden also writes about the history and central figures of his religion, the Bahá'í Faith. In "Baha' u'llah In The Garden Of Ridwan" he compares the founder of Bahá'í at an important juncture to Christ the night before being crucified w ho prayed to be relieved of his great destiny. In "Dawnbreaker" Hayden describes the torture of one early Bahá'í put to death by having candles of oil and wick lit within his skin. "Ablaze / with candles sconced / in weeping eyes / of wounds."

Despite his numerous awards, Hayden was not well known to many poetry readers until the end of his life. Fortunately, his reputation has increased since Collected Poems was published posthumously. If you are interested in rich, well crafted poetry which explores what it means to be human, try Hayden. As Aunt Jemima says in the above mentioned poem, "And that's the beauty part, I mean, ain't that the beauty part."

5.0 out of 5 stars modern master, January 16, 2012

By 

Fred C. Dobbs (Houston,TX) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Collected Poems (Paperback)

Robert Hayden was my teacher many years ago, a very gentle, talented man. He is an important Black poet and an important, essential American poet whose work will last.

4.0 out of 5 stars Deserves to be Read More Widely, May 16, 2011

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Collected Poems (Paperback)

This collection contains all the work of the fine American poet Robert Hayden. An African-American raised in Detroit, Hayden's work includes, but is hardly restricted to, a number of fine to outstanding poems inspired by African-American history. His superb memorial poem for Frederick Douglass is a good example of work in this vein. There are also a number of fine poems drawn from his life experience and his Bahai faith. Overall, I prefer his earlier work, but Hayden was a consistently powerful and interesting poet throughout his career. Like many excellent American poets, his work deserves to be read more widely.