Robert Hayden was a significant African American poet and essayist. His poetry fell under the influence of different writers from different literary movements, among them are Hughes, Keats, Dunbar, Yeats, that makes it difficult to refer him to one particular writing style or movement. Hayden belongs to the literary period of 1965 – the time when African American writings moved from the margins of American literature to its center, bringing new writing styles and techniques. It is for sure that Hayden’s poems are striking and full of feelings and emotions that are conveyed to the reader through the range of metaphors and other stylistic devices.
The poem Soledad is an attempt to describe and feel what an addicted person feels being under the drugs. And the answer is already there in the name of the poem. Soledad is the Spanish word that means ‘solitude’. The epigraph to the poem: “And I, I am no longer of that world.” is said to be seen by Hayden in the newspaper and belongs to the poem written by a drug addict teenager. (Hayden, 15) The issue alarmed the writer and in his own poem he tries to recreate the inner side of addiction. The reader does not know much about the setting of the poem, but the imagery used by Hayden helps to depict the picture in the imagination. Visual imagery is represented in the poem in: “naked”, “blinded room”, “pure black magnolias”, “dark side of the moon” and “clockless country of crystal”. (Hayden, 15) The well-chosen epithets help to deep into the atmosphere of dark room, loneliness and see what the poet sees. The olfactory imagery evokes the sense of smell with only one word – “chainsmoking”. The reader can feel how the smoke fills up the room and, having no place to go, overhangs above the room and leaves no fresh air to breath. The auditory imagery appeals to the sense of sound and is transferred through the jazz music that is constantly mentioned in the poem: “Miles Davis coolly blows for him: / O pena negra, sensual Famenco blues, / the red clay foxfire voice of Lady Day.” (Hayden, 15) Miles Davis and Lady Day are allusions – references to the jazz musicians that make the reader hear their music immediately. Hayden uses an extended metaphor in the poem comparing music to drugs, as it can also cause addiction and is able to cradle a listener and release from “fear and unfinished self”. (Hayden, 15) Such comparison reminds of the poetry of Harlem Renaissance representatives, for who music, especially, jazz was a source of writing as well.
The second poem Those Winter Sundays is of radically different topic, relationships between father and son, and comprises a mixture of literary styles. According to the structure, Those Winter Sundays is a fourteen lined sonnet. But at the same time there is no rhyme inherent to sonnets. On the other hand, the usual theme of sonnets is love and affection. And Hayden also copes with it in his own way. He writes about love to his father and father’s love to his son. But all the same, the poem is more realistic and has non-romantic diction. The actions described are true-to-life events, described in detail with a transparent language. The narrator of the story is a grown man, thinks of his childhood. The poem is full of sadness and regret of unexpressed love to his father, “who had driven out the cold / and polished my good shoes as well.” (Hayden, 18) The repetition in the line 13 ads grief to the poem: “What did I know, what did I know.” (Hayden, 18) The narrator suffers that he had not recognized his father’s love and had not thanked him for all he had done to him.
Works Cited
Hayden, Robert. Robert Hayden. Poems. 1st ed. PoemHunter.com, 2004. Print.
