On Discovering Robert Hayden

I find it hard for myself to describe why I was particularly moved by the words of Robert Hayden. My capture began in the headnote about him and the stanza included there at the end. There is something, a mysterious something that I cannot describe, about the voice and tone in his poems that makes me feel as though I am There. His writing puts me in exactly the place he wants me and it refuses to let me move until the poem is over and the message received.

Those Winter Sundays holds the notion so beautifully that a father does things unthanked, not because he would want the glory for the thing having been done, but simply because the thing needed to be done. That is the very definition of being a responsible man.

Middle Passage is a journey, an epic in meaning and range if not length. The absolute terror of slave ships, and the entire slave trade, is lamented beautifully. The shear inhumanity of the times is portrayed, but from different voices and even an ironic perspective when the traders speak. The poem pushes you into different eyes and you, as the reader, are driftwood in the sea of observation and horror where Hayden is Poseidon.

This window I have been given I am grateful for, and I will seek out more of his work to hear more of his voice.