“For American poets of Hayden’s generation, the development of a post-traditional poetry almost inevitably involved some kind of direct confrontation with received modernism. Hayden was certainly no exception. Beginning his career in the early 1940s, he was conspicuously aware of the previous generation’s legacy” (MEL).
Robert Hayden’s poetry expresses great influence from the major poetry masters such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. He took several ideas from them and used these to create his own, unique poetry centered on the African American race.
“Hayden was strongly influenced by the techniques of ‘New Criticism’, the strong reliance on imagery, symbolism, and the objective correlative, as practiced by the modern experimental masters, such as Eliot, and Pound” (Hatcher 69).
Hayden writes mainly of historical events or people, bringing in the culture of the readers of his poetry, just as Eliot and Pound do. Many of Hayden’s poems are about a famous African American who fought and made a difference for the lives of the slaves or the discriminated black people; he also wrote of painful events such as the middle passage and of happier events such as the underground railroad. Eliot similarly wrote of the disillusionment of World War One, and Christianity, and Pound wrote of World War One and Two.
“Most of the critics who have noticed the connections between Hayden’s poetry and Eliot’s have assumed that Hayden was, at least in matters of poetics, little more than a dutiful disciple, learning matters of technique from the master, and in some cases imitating him directly” (MEL).
In Eliot’s poems, he sometimes makes references to the Bible and puts these lines in italics off to the side, and Hayden borrows this idea in some of his poems as well. For example, in Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”, he says:
“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom” (poetryx.com).
In Hayden’s poem, “Night, Death, Mississippi”, he writes about Jesus dying on the cross, and uses a similar technique to Eliot:
“Then we beat them, he said,
beat them till our arms was tired
and the big old chains
messy and red.
O Jesus burning on the lily cross
Christ, it was better
than hunting bear
which don’t know why
you want him dead.
O night, rawhead and bloodybones night
You kids fetch Paw
some water now so’s he
can wash that blood
off him, she said.
O night betrayed by darkness not its own” (blogspot).
Hayden also borrowed the technique of using imagery as a foundation, with more meaning than is shown on the surface. For example, in Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”, he uses a lot of imagery that can be used to imply that the father is abusive towards the child, and is not actually as caring and kind as he seems to be. Hayden also frequently uses enjambment in his poetry, and trait he took from Eliot. Hayden uses this to continue his thoughts on the next line, creating more emphasis on the words used in the next line, and creating more flow for the poem. The use of connotations also helps greatly to present an underlying meaning to all of his poetry. He uses certain phrases that will make the reader have a happy or sad reaction to it, causing there to be a sad or happy tone to the poem, and allowing the reader to find the emotion and meaning to the poem. He took this from Ezra Pound’s precisely rendered images, in which Pound uses a certain image to create a picture in the reader’s head, ideas from their associations and connotations, and an emotion and feeling towards the poem. In order to create these images and emotions in the reader’s mind, Hayden uses the objective correlative, the layering of images, to create one major scene and image for the reader. This can be seen in several of his poems, including “Frederick Douglass”, which I wrote about in my previous post. Eliot uses this in most of his poems as well, and writes several short lines of description to create one larger image for the audience, as does Hayden with his poems. This can be found all over Eliot’s poetry, one example is from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
“Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool” (poetryx.com).
Pound also uses a similar technique that he calls the “concrete particular” to layer one precise image onto another, and creates a specific emotion from the audience. Both Pound and Eliot use free verse, as does Hayden, in order to make the poetry more musical and flow better. Pound focuses on precise words and common diction in his poetry, to make it simple and easy for all to understand. Hayden uses this idea in his poetry as well, as he always uses the precise words to get the description across, and does not overdo it with excessive imagery and flowery language. One example of a short poem that I really enjoyed of Pound’s is “In a Station of the Metro”.
“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough” (poetry.com).
Hayden wrote a similar two-line poem, that is condensed and says a lot in few words, taking after Pound’s technique in “Words in the Mourning Time”.
“Killing people to save, to free them?
With napalm lighting routes to the future?” (Rampersad).
While reading Hayden’s poetry, I noticed that he took so many of his ideas and ways of writing from the masters of Eliot and Pound, and it was quite interesting to me how he made it his own and uniquely centers on African Americans.
Book Sources:
Hatcher, John. The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden. Oxford: George Ronald, 1984. 130-31.
Rampersad, Arnold. Collected Poems of Robert Hayden. New York City: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1996. 15-20.
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