Background
Hayden, Robert Earl was born on August 4, 1913 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Son of Asa and Gladys Ruth (Finn) Sheffey.
Hayden, Robert Earl was born on August 4, 1913 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Son of Asa and Gladys Ruth (Finn) Sheffey.
Bachelor of Arts, Wayne State University, 1942. Master of Arts, University of Michigan, 1944. D. Little (honorary), Grand Valley State College, 1975, Brown U., 1976, Fisk U., 1976.
After graduating from Wayne State University, he worked on the Federal Writers Project. In 1941 he enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he studied under W. H. Auden. Shortly thereafter he converted to the Baha'i faith, a religion stressing the oneness of mankind. He was writerin-residence at Fisk University from 1946 to 1969. He then became a professor of English at the University of Michigan. Hayden died in Ann Arbor, Mich., Feb. 25, 1980.
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.
Whatever its subject, Hayden's poetry is a process of "working through." In an early poem he depicts middle age as a "Voyage through death/to life upon these shores." This is his central metaphor. Never unmindful of evil, he believes that it can be transcended by the ultimate perfection of the cosmos. The closing lines of "The Peacock Room" both illustrate this theme and Hayden's symbolist technique. Here the famous room designed by Whistler and displayed at the Smithsonian tends to absorb, or contain within its elegance and beauty, the destructiveness of Hiroshima, Watts, and My Lai:... What is art? What is life? What the Peacock Room? Rose-leaves and ashes drift its portals, gently spinning towards a bronze Bodhisattva's ancient smile.
Author books: Selected Poems, 1966. Night-Blooming Cereus, 1972. Angle of Ascent, 1975.American Journal, 1978. Visiting professor U. Louisville, 1969. Visiting poet U. Washington, summer 1969, Connecticut College, 1974.Consultant in poetry Library of Congress, 1976-1978. Member Michigan Arts Council, 1975-1976. Authors Guild, Phi Kappa Phi.
later became a member of the Bahá'í Faith during the early 1940s
Member Michigan Arts Council, 1975-1976. Member Academy American Poets, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association, American Poetry Society.
Married Erma I. Morris, June 15, 1940.