Robert Hayden ― Essays on the Poetry

Robert Hayden (1913--80) belonged to the generation of African American writers that followed the Harlem Renaissance--the generation of Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, among others. This collection of essays on Hayden by leading critics and poets charts his growing reputation as a major writer, the author of some of the twentieth century's most important poems on African American themes, including the famed "Middle Passage" and "Frederick Douglass." The pieces illuminate the themes and techniques that established Hayden as a key modernist writer with affinities both to poets such as T. S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca, and W. B. Yeats, and to traditions of African American writings, traditions exemplified by such figures as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.

Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry covers sixty years of commentary, book reviews, and essays, and includes newly published material by Hayden himself, making it an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this poet's vision of experience, artistry, and influence. Forty works examine the life and poetry of the first African American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the post now called Poet Laureate) and the first to receive the Grand Prix de la Poesie at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. This collection will be the standard text on Hayden for many years and will provide an invaluable aid to students, scholars, and the poet's growing number of admirers around the world.

Laurence Goldstein is Professor of English, University of Michigan, and editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review. His books include The American Poet at the Movies. Robert Chrisman is founding editor of The Black Scholar. A poet and essayist, he is a Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches literature and media in the Department of African-American Studies.