Biography Robert Hayden Introduction Early Years Literary Career Last Years and Legacy Introduction For many years, Robert Hayden occupied a difficult and ambiguous position in American poetry. Marginalized by the literary mainstream at the start of his career as a "Negro poet," he was considered not black enough by more militant writers and theorists in the 1960s. Such issues of literary identity had an upsetting parallel, the full extent of which he would only belatedly discover, in his personal life. Throughout decades of neglect and scorn, he clung steadfastly to his artistic and human values, producing a body of work whose artistry and emotional richness placed him at or very near the front rank of an especially talented generation of American poets. Early Years Until Hayden's late teens, his neighborhood was racially mixed, and his playmates included Jewish and Italian children ("The Rabbi" and "Elegies for Paradise Valley" are among several fine poems to emerge from this aspect of his experience). His extreme nearsightedness limited the scope of his physical activities, and was also responsible for his being sent to Northern High School, a largely white institution. Having written and made up stories from a very early age, he discovered modern poetry at the age of sixteen, and refocused his literary energies in that direction. He graduated from high school in 1930, the year that America began to feel the full effects of the stock market crash of the previous October. He worked a number of odd jobs, including typing, clerking in a grocery store, and even issuing policy slips for an illegal numbers game. Meanwhile, he continued to take postgraduate classes. | |
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