Robert Hayden Article Index for
Robert
Website Links For
Robert
 

Information About

Robert Hayden




See Geek Code for the related Robert Hayden


Robert Hayden ( August 4 , 1913 - 1980 ), born as '''Asa Bundy Sheffey''', was a United States African-American Poet , Essayist , and Educator .


LIFE


Hayden grew up in an adopted family in Detroit, Michigan . He was raised as a Baptist , but converted to the Bahá'í Faith during the early 1940s after marrying a Bahá'í, Erma Inez Morris. He is one of the best-known Bahá'í poets and his religion influenced much of his work.


CAREER


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 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'', 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 '' Amistad '' affair; ''Runagate, Runagate''; and '' Frederick Douglass ''.


BIBLIOGRAPHY


  • ''Selected Poems by Robert Hayden''. NY: October House 1966.

  • ''Words in the Mourning Time: Poems by Robert Hayden''. London: October House, 1970

  • ''Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems by Robert Hayden''. NY: Liveright, 1975

  • ''American Journal: Poems by Robert Hayden''. NY: Liveright Pub. Corp., 1982

  • ''Collected Prose: Robert Hayden''. Ed. Frederick Glaysher. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1984.



EXTERNAL LINKS