S16-DES11
Robert Hayden: His Day Is Now!
Copyright Ó
by Dan Schneider, 7/19/03
Robert Hayden is 1 of the most underrated & Neglected poets of the last century. It seems incredible that this poet, easily the equal of a Pound or Eliot (& in my opinion a better poet than either), should have garnered so little critical attention, especially in the near-quarter century since his death; the time most great poets’ careers get their 1st mouth-to-mouth. Yes, I guess it would be easy to pawn off this neglect on racism, since RH was black & the other 2 poets I mentioned were white, or even to state that RH was a loner, unaffiliated with any movement or –ism, whilst the other 2 were downright obsessed with the notion of their ‘import’ as poets. But, I think it may just be a matter of timing. Often poets are neglected in their lifetime only to have their proverbial literary stock rise posthumously. I think this may be as good a time as any for the resurrection of RH’s poetic stock, since American Poetry (at least that published) is at a nadir, & African-American Poetry is even- if you can stomach it- worse. I intend to show that RH is a poet not only worthy of technical admiration, but a poet who transcends his own limited lifetime & will always be of relevance to any sentient lover of the art form- human or not. But, 1st some brief background info:
RH was born in Detroit, Michigan, on August 4th, 1913 to Ruth (born Gladys Finn) Sheffey- a mulatto- & Asa Sheffey- an ex-coal miner- as Asa Bundy Sheffey, & raised in poverty in a blighted Detroit ghetto called Paradise Valley. His parents separated before his birth & he was taken in by Sue Ellen Westerfield Hayden & William Hayden- whose surname he took. He suffered from almost constant teasing from the neighborhood kids due to his poor eyesight, which forced him to wear the classic Coke bottle type eyeglasses. This emotional volatility & insecurity was only heightened when he was torn between the Haydens & the mentally unbalanced Ruth Sheffey’s attempts to regain custody- not to mention the Hayden’s volatile relationship. On a trip to visit Asa Sheffey in Gary, Indiana, young Robert was turned off by Asa’s vicious attacks on Ruth & the Haydens. William Hayden & Robert never got along well because the former was a devout Baptist, something that never touched the young poet. Years later RH pointed to these factors as major reasons he suffered from bouts of manic depression, but they also led to 2 of his best & most well-known poems: The Whipping & Those Winter Sundays. & because of his terrible vision RH was unable to participate in much physical activity, thereby curtailing his ability to socially interact. In true nerd/geek fashion he found solace in reading. He graduated from high school in 1930, & worked a number of jobs- as a typist, a grocery clerk, & even running #s. In 1931 RH’s 1st poem- Africa- was published by Abbott's Monthly, a national black magazine. By 1932 he won a scholarship to Detroit City College (which later became Wayne State University). He majored in Spanish, & longed to teach poetry, but left in 1936, 1 credit shy of graduation. Later that year he worked for the Federal Writers Project, researching black history & culture, & reading writers like Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, & Margaret Walker for the 1st time. In 1937, his poem Autumnal was published in American Stuff, a WPA anthology. At the WPA he met Langston Hughes & was amazed when LH told him he had never been able to write a sonnet. In 1938, RH went to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, & met John Malcolm Brinnin & other young Left Wing white poets. By June of 1940 he married Erma Inez Morris, a concert pianist & music teacher. Their only child, Maia was born on October 5, 1942. Late in 1940 Heart-Shape in the Dust was published- his 1st book of poetry. Its critical success assisted RH in getting into a very exclusive graduate English Lit class at the University of Michigan where he studied for his Masters under British poet W. H. Auden. WHA became a sort of mentor to RH- who also found direction studying poets such as Countee Cullen, Carl Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jean Toomer, Elinor Wiley, Hart Crane, & Langston Hughes. In 1943 RH converted to Bahá’i, & became the equivalent of a poetic ‘Made Man’ when O Daedalus, Fly Away Home was published by Poetry magazine. Such diverse appreciation would later reflect well on RH’s long, albeit not-too prolific, poetic career. From 1946-69 he taught at Fisk University, then taught at Michigan University until his death. Although RH was never 1 to explicitly invoke the ‘race poet’ ideal of Langston Hughes, he was a master at writing on ‘blackness’ without descending into screed or caricature. His interest in black history got international recognition in the 1966 when he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Poesie at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, for his book of poems- Ballad of Remembrance, & named Poet Laureate of Senegal. That year also saw his Selected Poems released. But 1966 also saw RH attacked at the First Black Writers' Conference at Fisk University, in April. He was called an Uncle Tom for believing the only poetry worth reading was GOOD poetry. That none of these ‘critic’ were a tenth the poet RH was, was no matter. In 1969, after several years of abuse at Fisk RH resigned & took an offer to teach English at his alma Mater- Michigan University. In 1976, he became the first black Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (now called the Poet Laureate). A few years before his death RH had 1 final trauma- he discovered that Sue & William Hayden never formally adopted him, & his given legal name was still Asa Bundy Sheffey. RH died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 25th, 1980.
But, what
other than technical excellence, or greatness, calls out for RH’s ascension in
the American Poetic Canon? Well, great poets often are ambitious- writing long
or book-length poems that attest to their idea of their own ‘vision’. RH was
long influenced by, & admiring of Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown's
Body- often thought of as the 1st
American epic poem. Indeed, even a poet like Hart Crane found inspiration in
SVB’s provocative (if too verbose) masterpiece. Likewise, RH decided, during
the 2nd World war, that the time was ripe for a black epic- modeled
along the lines of JBB & HC’s The Bridge.
In an interview, nearly 30 years later, RH described his ambition thusly: ‘I've
always been interested in Afro-American history, and when I was a young poet,
since I knew that our history had been misrepresented, I wanted to contribute
toward an understanding of what our past had really been like. I set out to
correct the misconceptions and to destroy some of the stereotypes and clichés
which surrounded Negro history.’ Thus the genesis of some of RH’s most
famous poems (some from the original manuscript, & some years later from the
impulse of the idea) featuring historical figures such as Harriet Tubman,
Phillis Wheatley, Nat Turner, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Crispus Attucks, &
Frederick Douglass, which were the remanence of an unpublished, & abandoned
manuscript called The Black Spear, the title
of which arose in this manner: ‘I became interested in writing
it largely as a result of reading Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's
Body. There's a passage in which he says, "O, black-skinned epic,
epic with the long black spear, I cannot sing you now, having too white a
heart." And he goes on to say that someday a poet will rise to sing of the
black spear. I dared to hope that I might be that poet.’ But, more
importantly, RH did not view his historical role as that of a black poet seeking
to redress past wrongs, but rather as an American poet attempting to shed light
on events for all Americans. Putting aside technical comparisons, this
characteristic alone lifts RH’s ‘vision’ well beyond the extreme
provincialism espoused by such ‘revolutionaries’ as Pound & Eliot, &
allows the introduction of a key quality in much great poetry- that of
ambiguity; never being sure if the speaker of the poem is the poet or not. While
TSE & EP often assumed grotesque masques early in their career, their later
work was ossified by the intrusion of TSE’s Conservative Christianity &
EP’s rabid Fascism & anti-Semitism. No such blights mar RH’s work or
person (even though RH was an outspoken member of the Bahá’i religion)-
decades before the term multiculturalism gained coin, RH was practicing a
version of it far truer & correct than its modern ‘politically correct’
bastardizations. In this regard he resembles poets as diverse as Hart Crane,
James Emanuel, Walt Whitman, early Gwendolyn Brooks, & Rainer Maria Rilke.
In fact, RH was a early universalist, if not a cosmic poet- in the many senses
of the word- he even has a pretty good little poem about a UFO! The only known
surviving poems from the original TBS manuscript are RH’s anthology standards O
Daedelus, Fly Away Home, Frederick Douglass, & Middle Passage.
Although not
always a marker for greatness, another aspect of RH’s work is how singular it
is- starting out in the era of High Modernism, surviving the geneses & wanes
of Confessionalism & Languagism, & even the birth of insipid PC Elitism.
Yet, an RH poem is almost always distinguished by a tightness of form admixed
with an observation, or slant, that only he could bring. He, it seems, knew that
to be great 1 had to not be generic. Here, 1 can see the influence of many of
the poets previously mentioned- but I wanna posit 1 that is rarely keyed in to
RH’s oeuvre- Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar is usually dismissed by black
critics as a sort of poetic Stepin’ Fetchit. But, he was the 1st
major black poet in America who could seriously have the term ‘great’
bandied about, without seriously sounding insane. PLD specialized in both high
& low poetry- the former being almost perfectly musicked poems- although
often on banal subjects. In this way he was sort of an African-American Walter
de la Mare. Yet, he also wrote some excellent, & touching Negro dialect
poems. This schism between the low & the high is also found in RH’s
all-too tiny corpus. Whether on topics as UFO’s, or famous paintings, he was
equally adept at coring in to the essential thing that could be made memorable
to a reader.
He was also
adept at not entangling himself in the poetry politics of his day- 1st
sidestepping the reactionary New Criticism, & then sailing above the
mud-slinging Black Power poets of the 1960s, who viciously labeled him an Uncle
Tom. He also wrote marvelous poems on his youth & his real-life experiences-
yet no one ever lumped him in with the Confessionalists. RH’s ghetto
upbringing was a racially-mixed 1- he had friends of Irish, Jewish & Italian
descent- poems like Elegies for Paradise Valley & The Rabbi
chronicle these years.
Let’s now look at 2 of the best poems that chronicle RH’s youth- The
Whipping & Those Winter Sundays. The latter poem I’ve already
detailed quite well in the 4th section of my essay on Masculine
Poetry. It is simply put, 1 of the best published sonnets ever written. From
the title to the inventive modifiers to the rending end, this poem is so filled
with genuine sentiment, & without any sentimentality, that it should be an
object lesson for how to write poems confessionally, without writing
Confessionally, & how to write a political poem without it being a Political Poem! Here’s the
poem:
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
While we are never quite sure that the speaker in TWS is RH, or a fiction, there would be no way to posit RH as the boy in The Whipping, save for some chroniclers’ biographical assertions that it is. Regardless, that knowledge or its lack has little to do with the poem’s success. Here is the poem:
The Whipping
The
old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
This is a terrific poem- let’s hit it little-by-little. The title is rather banal & 1 might believe, especially knowing its author is black, that this is a poem on slavery. But, by poem’s end we see that it can refer to at least 4 individuals- the 2 whippees & the 2 whippers. Stanza 1:
The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.
Where is the way? Across an alley, an apartment corridor, a street? Not that it’s so important, BUT the fact that the poet feels free to insert such ambiguity in such a minor detail tells us we are not dealing with the typical published poet who often has whole throwaway poem. That the old woman needs to ‘testify’ before the neighborhood does not specifically mark this as a ‘black poem’- but it hints at it, as this is often an aspect of Afro-American subculture. The music is fine, as well- the w’s & the r sounds- not overdone, but enough to give it a nice low music. #2:
Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.
Now we get interesting. The 1st line is most likely explained by the whippee’s mind trying to avert pain, & desperately grasping at ‘escape’. Or, 1 can read that line & the next as the boy being whipped in a garden- zinnias are flowers & elephant ears, I believe, are a colloquial name for a certain type of flower, or simply some large leaves that look like elephant ears. We then get our 1st real description of the whipper- we know she’s old, but to a child (do we know the speaker’s age?) that could be anything over 30. Now, we see she is fat, but not just fat- crippling fat. This induces us to some pity, for even the omniscient speaker seems to grant that. Stanza 3:
She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:
The 1st line
contains a killer line break. Reading just line 1 we see the old crone whipping
not the boy, but herself- both the perpetrator of the ‘shrilly circling’
& the de facto circling itself- about the boy. An astute reader surmises
self-loathing as part of the old woman’s act. Then the next line morphs the
self-flagellation to (if read merely grammatically) her flat-out beating the boy
until she cannot use the stick any more. This reminds me of the time my dad
broke his vaunted spanking stick over my ass! Then we get what could be
back-to-back clichés in the hands of a lesser poet. But look how RH inverts
them: 1) The boy’s tears are NOT rain, but rainy weather, 2) the memories are
not wounds, but woundlike, & 3) look how the tears & wounds are
interacted. RH achieves the balm of familiar clichés yet, read closely, gives
us a wholly new interaction of the boy’s inner self to his body. By the next
stanza this interaction results in the flashback scene:
My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful
The omniscient slips into 1st person. We are at a 2nd whipping, brought to reprise by the 1st’s power. The speaker communes with the boy who has been whipped, & now posits the motive behind whippings: hate. Stanza 5:
Words
could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,
We now see another great line break. Hate is a modifier not just for
blows, as the end of stanza 4 suggests, but it grammatically modifies the words
that the whipper of the speaker says. 2 important points- 1) we do not know if
the speaker’s whipper is an old woman also, & 2) we again get the
connection between body & soul. The music throughout the poem has been
consistently there, but never intruding on the psychic drama- like a good film
score we are aware of it only in how it helps us through the emotions- such as
the speeding up caused by all the n sounds in this stanza’s 2nd
line. By the 3rd line we dissolve back to the ‘present’ of the
speaker. The repeton of over a marker of the 2 whippings & the
speaker’s unconscious annealing to himself. The boy is crying, & he seems
to have moved from the outside, or nearer to where the speaker has seen &
heard all this, to his room- perhaps muffling the sounds. But, this stanza’s
main import is to let us know that the speaker no longer loves a face- the
speaker’s own, for letting the whipping bring forth hateful words &
thoughts? This stanza’s 1st line literally says that it could be
those words that manifest that he no longer knows & loves, while the whole
of the narrative implies the more obvious, that the whipping the speaker
suffered has ruined forever the mien of the whipper from his/her past. This is
another, 5th, whipping- that the speaker has lost part of his/her own
resolve & ability to transcend. Stanza 6:
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.
Then we see that the old woman is also ‘whipped’ by the act of
whipping, & has been beaten by life- as too, by implication, the speaker’s
ancient whipper. More to the point, the old bat is not just exhausted, but
purged. Yet, she still has demons, the boy across the way is still in for more
because the old woman’s woes have only been ‘avenged in part’, not wholly
purged. & what is she trying to purge, what are her ‘hidings’? It does
not matter- the point is the speaker has grown to the point to recognize the
motivations behind the 2 whippers. He has, 1 hopes, by this- possibly- added a 6th
‘whipping’ to the poem- that of fear & hate. He may not choose to hide
his burdens, as the old lady has- but we are not sure. Such insights are
fleeting. Will the speaker relapse in to hate & perhaps whip another some
day? The not knowing is what lends power to this poem’s ending. Despite the
poem ending on a seeming revelation & declarative, there is that unsaid
possibility that the revelation will be lost if fear & hate resurface which
gives the whole poem a vital anima.
Let me briefly detail some of the greatness in some other well-known RH
poems- here’s 1:
Frederick Douglass
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
Yes, this is a sonnet even though it has no discernible rime scheme. The
poem has many plaudits, but I’ll detail merely 1 that has never- to my
knowledge- been commented upon: irony. The same could be true for the toto of
RH’s corpus, but note how the technical excellence of the poem, which makes it
so memorable, argues against what the very poem is stating about Douglass’s
life. Now, this is a minor pleasure pot to feed from, but it is worth noting
since little pointers like this are not generally ascribed to RH- a poet who,
because black & nowadays safely dead, usually has terms like dignified &
humanistic attached to him. Therefore, it’s worth noting he was very capable
of poetic sleight-of-hand.
Here’s another smaller RH poem. read it & we’ll talk:
Monet's
Waterlilies
Today
as the news from Selma and Saigon
poisons the air like fallout,
I come again to see
the serene, great picture that I love.
Here space and time exist in light
the eye like the eye of faith believes.
The seen, the known
dissolve in iridescence, become
illusive flesh of light
that was not, was, forever is.
O light beheld as through refracting tears.
Here is the aura of that world
each of us has lost.
Here is the shadow of its joy.
How many times have you read a ‘painting poem’ where all you get is
rote description? So often that I’m sure you were expecting some quasi-sexual
description of the flower, or some rapture over the color to lead off the poem.
Instead, you get a great move outward, then a focus back on to the painting. Or
not. We never really have an idea what the painting looks like. The poem assumes
the image, & by extension the title, are coins of a currency shared in by
poet & reader. Think about how often that granting of basic knowledge &
lack of condescension is missing from contemporary poets who feel a need to
‘teach’ their benighted readership, because poets are the messengers of the
gods- or some similar such nonsense. By stanza 2 RH is both recapping the
Emersonian invisible eye, then redefining it into something both greater &
more ephemeral. Then we get this great conceit that ends the poem & leaves
the reader to make what they will of it. RH is not telling, but showing how a
poet truly reaches & rewards a reader.
Yet, not all RH wrote was golden- here’s a little known poem by him
that is only solid (at best)- but it has import. Read it & see if you can
discern why it’s important.
Perseus
Her sleeping head with its great
gelid mass
of serpents torpidly astir
burned into the mirroring shield--
a scathing image dire
as hated truth the mind accepts at last
and festers on.
I struck. The shield flashed bare.
Yet even as I lifted up the head
and started from that place
of gazing silences and terrored stone,
I thirsted to destroy.
None could have passed me then--
no garland-bearing girl, no priest
or staring boy--and lived.
OK, this is basically a fairly straight-forward retelling of the death of Medusa. Line 3 is very weak- but look at the intriguing metaphor that comes after it. The poem ends with Perseus getting a little hubris over the power he now wields- an interesting touch. But the import is that RH DOES merely retell the tale with a slight twist- no forcing it into a tale of oppression or racism, etc. + the poem has a nice understated music laced with a sneaky off-rhyme scheme. The man, as said, strove to be a poet 1st. Let’s tackle another little-known RH poem, but 1 that fares considerably better.
Full Moon
No longer throne of a goddess to
whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood's
tumbling Mother Goose man,
The emphatic moon ascends--
the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
the white hope of communications men.
Some I love who are dead
were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
planted seeds, trimmed their hair,
Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
as it waxed or waned.
It shines tonight upon their graves.
And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
its light made holy by the dazzling tears
with which it mingled.
And spread its radiance on the exile's path
of Him who was The Glorious One,
its light made holy by His holiness.
Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
an arms base, a livid sector,
the full moon dominates the dark.
A fairly inauspicious title- eh? Stanza 1 recounts various human
interpretations of the moon through the eons, then the Modern Moon ascends-
including the interesting ‘white hope’ description. Could this be a racial
comment? The next 2 stanzas are narrative to direct the opening onward. We then
veer from the recounting of dead loved 1s to the Christ myth’s penultimate
tale. There could be literally a dozen or more interpretations. The most
manifest is that where once men made Holy Places they now use those same places
for death. Yet, that is in a way what happened at Gethsemane. By poem’s end
the moon becomes almost a beacon of the Resurrection, or a 2nd Coming
against men’s evil, etc. A pretty cool turn away from what might’ve been
expected from that title.
Speaking of titles let’s look at 2 of RH’s more complex poems, &
2 of his most well-known: the oddly titled Runagate Runagate & Middle
Passage:
Runagate
Runagate
Runs
falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness
and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror
and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing
and the night cold and the night long and the river
to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning
and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere
morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going
Runagate
Runagate
Runagate
Many thousands rise and go
many thousands crossing over
O
mythic North
O star-shaped yonder Bible city
Some go weeping and some rejoicing
some in coffins and some in carriages
some in silks and some in shackles
Rise and go or fare
you well
No more auction block for me
no more driver's lash for me
If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age,
new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes;
if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto
branded E on the right cheek, R on the left,
catch them if you can and notify subscriber.
Catch them if you can, but it won't be easy.
They'll dart underground when you try to catch them,
plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes,
torn into scorpions when you try to catch them.
And before I'll be a slave
I'll be buried in my grave
North star and bonanza gold
I'm bound for the freedom, freedom-bound
and oh Susyanna don't you cry for me
Runagate
Runagate
II.
Rises
from their anguish and their power,
Harriet Tubman,
woman of earth, whipscarred,
a summoning, a shining
Mean to be free
And this was the way of it, brethren brethren,
way we journeyed from Can't to Can.
Moon so bright and no place to hide,
the cry up and the patterollers riding,
hound dogs belling in bladed air.
And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it,
we'll never make it. Hush that now,
and she's turned upon us, levelled pistol
glinting in the moonlight:
Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says;
you keep on going now or die, she says.
Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The General
alias Moses Stealer of Slaves
In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson
Garrett Douglass Thoreau John
Brown
Armed and known to be Dangerous
Wanted Reward Dead or Alive
Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see
mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?
Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,
five times calling to the hants in the air.
Shadow of a face in the scary leaves,
shadow of a voice in the talking leaves:
Come ride-a my train
Oh that train, ghost-story train
through swamp and savanna movering movering,
over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish,
Midnight Special on a sabre track movering
movering,
first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.
Come ride-a my train
Mean mean mean to be free.
1st off to note is that the word runagate is useful because it sounds like runaway- & connotes all that word’s import to the tale of the slaves, & also it derives from a 16th century variant of the word renegade- something Harriet Tubman also was. But this poem has often been misinterpreted- generally because it so easily derives a narrative from pastiche, rather than direct telling. We start off with almost an onomatopoeia of an out-of breath runaway slave’s escape, & the fleet of thoughts that dashes through his/her mind, with subtle dialectism- ‘jack-muh-lanterns’, as well as no punctuation & the everpresence of the present with the use of that tense. Thoughts later detail bits of the whole Underground Railroad network- its head & benefactors. This 1st stanza also shows an excellent choice of using free verse to showcase the breathlessness- a more strict form would seem too forced. The poem’s whole movement is ascension- to the north, up from bondage, rising, etc. But, this whole spiritual ascension is nicely countered by a grim realistic portrait of Harriet Tubman- no spiritual symbol of perfection. She’s a pragmatic cold-blooded purveyor of her trade. She moves bodies in an almost cut-throat counterpoint to the slavers. That a black poet should write about such an important figure in this way shows just how fearless & wedded to the art of poetry RH was. Reread these lines & really comprehend the scene:
And
fear starts a-murbling, Never make it,
we'll never make it. Hush that now,
and she's turned upon us, levelled pistol
glinting in the moonlight:
Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says;
you keep on going now or die, she says.
This is not a saintly visage. Think of how almost every contemporary published poet would have portrayed HT in a poem about the Underground Railroad, & you’ll realize just how shocking this is. Also, that RH ends the poem before any real conclusion. It ends in mid-flight- just as it began. This scene always was & always will be. At least to the world of the characters it portrays, which makes HT’s determination all the more admirable- WITHOUT EVER DIRECTLY STATING SO! This poem is an active snippet of what it might have been like at that scene, not some hagiography from afar. HT- in this poem, & a reader must suspect in real-life- was 1 mean bitch of a savior. That’s what makes her so much more memorable than the long list of forgettable poetic heroes & heroines that ‘adorn’ contemporary published poetry. Yet, most criticism of the poem misses these very points, instead opting to pasteurize RH’s HT into some Bible-quoting heroine with line quotations as ‘Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see/mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?’, or portray the poem as some simplistic screed by quoting lines out of context- like this couplet: ‘And before I'll be a slave/I'll be buried in my grave’. But the poem’s ending without conclusion is the very crux of this poem as it is loaded with duplicity, as every mean, can be read in more than 1 sense of the word. This seemingly simple little poetic device works so well in this poem- yet think how little it is used in today’s published poetry.
But this poem was, in a sense, almost a warmup to the longer, more complex Middle Passage. Let’s look at it, then opine:
Middle Passage
I
Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
"10 April 1800--
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
our and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."
Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:
Standing to America, bringing home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.
Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones
New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes.
Jesus Saviour Pilot Me
Over Life's Tempestuous Sea
We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,
safe passage to our vessels bringing
heathen souls unto Thy chastening.
Jesus Saviour
"8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick
with fear, but writing eases fear a little
since still my eyes can see these words take shape
upon the page & so I write, as one
would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,
but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has killed an albatross? A plague among
our blacks--Ophthalmia: blindness--& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
& there is blindness in the fo'c'sle
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come
to port."
What port awaits us, Davy Jones' or home? I've
heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and
chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling
up on deck.
Thou Who Walked On Galilee
"Deponent further sayeth The Bella J
left the Guinea Coast
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
for the barracoons of Florida:
"That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:
"That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:
"That when the Bo's'n piped all hands, the flames
spreading from starboard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:
"That the burning blacks could not be reached,
that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:
"Further Deponent sayeth not."
Pilot Oh Pilot Me
II
Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished
Were caught as prizes for our barracoons.
Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.
And there was one--King Anthracite we named him--
fetish face beneath French parasols
of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:
He'd honor us with drum and feast and conjo
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,
and for tin crowns that shone with paste,
red calico and German-silver trinkets
Would have the drums talk war and send
his warriors to burn the sleeping villages
and kill the sick and old and lead the young
in coffles to our factories.
Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
from those black fields, and I'd be trading still
but for the fevers melting down my bones.
III
Shuttles in the rocking loom of history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth;
plough through thrashing glister toward
fata morgana's lucent melting shore,
weave toward New World littorals that are
mirage and myth and actual shore.
Voyage through death,
voyage whose chartings are unlove.
A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
spreads outward from the hold,
where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.
Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, the corpse of mercy
rots with him, rats eat love's rotten gelid eyes. But, oh, the
living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose
hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper's
claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks
the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot
kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will.
"But for the storm that flung up barriers
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,
three days at most; but for the storm we should
have been prepared for what befell.
Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was
that interval of moonless calm filled only
with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds,
then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries
and they had fallen on us with machete
and marlinspike. It was as though the very
air, the night itself were striking us.
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,
we were no match for them. Our men went down
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal
Celestino ran from below with gun
and lantern and I saw, before the cane-
knife's wounding flash, Cinquez,
that surly brute who calls himself a prince,
directing, urging on the ghastly work.
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
he turned on me. The decks were slippery
when daylight finally came. It sickens me
to think of what I saw, of how these apes
threw overboard the butchered bodies of
our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.
Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told:
Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us
you see to steer the ship to Africa,
and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea
voyaged east by day and west by night,
deceiving them, hoping for rescue,
prisoners on our own vessel, till
at length we drifted to the shores of this
your land, America, where we were freed
from our unspeakable misery. Now we
demand, good sirs, the extradition of
Cinquez and his accomplices to La
Havana. And it distresses us to know
there are so many here who seem inclined
to justify the mutiny of these blacks.
We find it paradoxical indeed
that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty
are rooted in the labor of your slaves
should suffer the august John Quincey Adams
to speak with so much passion of the right
of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters
and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's
garland for Cinquez. I tell you that
we are determined to return to Cuba
with our slaves and there see justice done.
Cinquez--
or let us say 'the Prince'--Cinquez shall die."
The deep immortal human wish,
the timeless will:
Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,
life that transfigures many lives.
Voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
Let’s dissect the poem bit-by-bit, then look at how this poem has been neglected critically by those who have bolstered the works & careers of far lesser poets. Then I’ll explain why. Let’s hit it from the start:
Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy:
Sails flashing to the wind like weapons,
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying;
horror the corposant and compass rose.
Middle Passage:
voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
"10 April 1800--
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says
their moaning is a prayer for death,
our and their own. Some try to starve themselves.
Lost three this morning leaped with crazy laughter
to the waiting sharks, sang as they went under."
We start off with a log’s naming of names- obviously slave names, not
the slaves’ real names. RH has already set the stage that things are not what
they are alleged to be. The next 3 lines are brilliant in how they rehab
familiar & stale ‘slavery’ imagery- images stale long before the TV epic
Roots ground them into the American psyche. We then get the refrain
element- an omniscient singer or the Muse itself? Then the log of the captain of
the Amistad. Whether this is real or not is unimportant because it feels
real. This is art, after all- & a good lie is far better than a dull truth.
How many critics miss this essential point? Excelsior!
Desire, Adventure, Tartar, Ann:
Standing to America, bringing home
black gold, black ivory, black seed.
Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, of his bones
New England pews are made, those are altar lights that were his eyes.
Jesus Saviour Pilot Me
Over Life's Tempestuous Sea
More naming- a 2nd refrain element. Again, we are reminded
that all is not what it seems. Perhaps this is the poem’s acknowledgement of
its own artifice & self-awareness? We then get the ship’s de facto mission
statement, & then a bizarre metaphor spoken by an unknown voice. Is it
another omniscient, the captain, a chilled God? Then God appears- but to whom?
It could very well be that the manifestation is being made to the captain. Is
the captain despairing over his evil trade? At this point in the poem it could
very well be that RH has subversively chosen to display the evils of the trade
not by showing the horrors of the sufferers, but the torment of the inflictors.
How few published poets would even think to attempt that tack
nowadays? America’s slavery & racism may be the burden of the black man,
but they are clearly the problem of the white man. Onward.
We pray that Thou wilt grant, O Lord,
safe passage to our vessels bringing
heathen souls unto Thy chastening.
Jesus Saviour
"8 bells. I cannot sleep, for I am sick
with fear, but writing eases fear a little
since still my eyes can see these words take shape
upon the page & so I write, as one
would turn to exorcism. 4 days scudding,
but now the sea is calm again. Misfortune
follows in our wake like sharks (our grinning
tutelary gods). Which one of us
has killed an albatross? A plague among
our blacks--Ophthalmia: blindness--& we
have jettisoned the blind to no avail.
It spreads, the terrifying sickness spreads.
Its claws have scratched sight from the Capt.'s eyes
& there is blindness in the fo'c'sle
& we must sail 3 weeks before we come
to port."
What port awaits us, Davy Jones' or home? I've
heard of slavers drifting, drifting, playthings of wind and storm and
chance, their crews gone blind, the jungle hatred crawling
up on deck.
Thou Who Walked On Galilee
We now see the captain is the putative hero of this poem so far- or at least we suspect it is for who else would have access to the ship’s logs? A call to the Messiah. Interestingly, RH even has the speaker (captain?) reference Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner- a nice touch which reeks of Post-Modernism, although it uses it in a far more subtle & appropriate way than any PMer has. But by stanza’s end we see the hero is NOT the captain, but some underling- the 1st Mate? Then, again, a call to the Savior.
"Deponent further sayeth The Bella J
left the Guinea Coast
with cargo of five hundred blacks and odd
for the barracoons of Florida:
"That there was hardly room 'tween-decks for half
the sweltering cattle stowed spoon-fashion there;
that some went mad of thirst and tore their flesh
and sucked the blood:
"That Crew and Captain lusted with the comeliest
of the savage girls kept naked in the cabins;
that there was one they called The Guinea Rose
and they cast lots and fought to lie with her:
"That when the Bo's'n piped all hands, the flames
spreading from starboard already were beyond
control, the negroes howling and their chains
entangled with the flames:
"That the burning blacks could not be reached,
that the Crew abandoned ship,
leaving their shrieking negresses behind,
that the Captain perished drunken with the wenches:
"Further Deponent sayeth not."
Pilot Oh Pilot Me
We then get what seem to be some courtly proceedings- the formality
reinforced by the fact that the stanzas are now rendered in formal quatrains.
BUT, also note that the quatrains are not strict in attempted meter nor
syllabics- this also undercuts the seeming veracity of what is being recounted;
just as the earlier import of the slave name recitation told readers that all is
not what it seems. The reader needs to be wary for the assorted speakers seem to
be filled with balderdash. Which, if any, is telling the truth? As for what is
said- we know from earlier of starvation & blight having swept the ship. Now
we get an official explanation read into the record of the poem- a sort of
counterpoint to the speaker’s earlier logs. All of what occurs seems standard
slave ship behavior of the era. On to Part 2:
Aye, lad, and I have seen those factories,
Gambia, Rio Pongo, Calabar;
have watched the artful mongos baiting traps
of war wherein the victor and the vanquished
Were caught as prizes for our barracoons.
Have seen the nigger kings whose vanity
and greed turned wild black hides of Fellatah,
Mandingo, Ibo, Kru to gold for us.
And there was one--King Anthracite we named him--
fetish face beneath French parasols
of brass and orange velvet, impudent mouth
whose cups were carven skulls of enemies:
He'd honor us with drum and feast and conjo
and palm-oil-glistening wenches deft in love,
and for tin crowns that shone with paste,
red calico and German-silver trinkets
Would have the drums talk war and send
his warriors to burn the sleeping villages
and kill the sick and old and lead the young
in coffles to our factories.
Twenty years a trader, twenty years,
for there was wealth aplenty to be harvested
from those black fields, and I'd be trading still
but for the fevers melting down my bones.
Now we get a history of an individual- most likely the actual captain. Some critics have misread this section as being something outside the actual Amistad mutiny of 1839, but there is no real evidence to support this view- more likely it is 1 of the Amistad’s crew reminiscing (as is that occupation’s wont) at some point before the actual mutiny. We get a shifting of blame for his trade- ‘everyone does it’, even ‘nigger kings’, as well as a remorselessness. Only his ill health prevents him from still plying his trade. This section is in stark contrast to the multiple speakers of part 1, as well as there being no moral ambivalence. This section portrays, as honestly as 1 can in art, a ‘real’ man of the times. Also, note how, thus far & throughout the rest of the poem, clichés are very minimal, there are no poor enjambments, & a nice music pervades the whole poem- almost each line makes use of alliterations & assonances, as well the occasional off-rhyme. Now, compare this to any contemporary poetaster. On to section 3:
Shuttles in the rocking loom of
history,
the dark ships move, the dark ships move,
their bright ironical names
like jests of kindness on a murderer's mouth;
plough through thrashing glister toward
fata morgana's lucent melting shore,
weave toward New World littorals that are
mirage and myth and actual shore.
Voyage through death,
voyage whose chartings are unlove.
The 1st stanza is absolutely majestic in construction, music,
& meaning. We are now in the realm of the omniscient. Then we end with a
refrain.
A charnel stench, effluvium of living death
spreads outward from the hold,
where the living and the dead, the horribly dying,
lie interlocked, lie foul with blood and excrement.
Deep in the festering hold thy father lies, the corpse of mercy
rots with him, rats eat love's rotten gelid eyes. But, oh, the
living look at you with human eyes whose suffering accuses you, whose
hatred reaches through the swill of dark to strike you like a leper's
claw. You cannot stare that hatred down or chain the fear that stalks
the watches and breathes on you its fetid scorching breath; cannot
kill the deep immortal human wish, the timeless will.
We start with rote, horrid description in the next stanza. The next stanza- despite its being broken like this online- is a proem, & we’ve now slipped back to a seeming member of the ship’s POV.
"But for the storm that flung up barriers
of wind and wave, The Amistad, señores,
would have reached the port of Príncipe in two,
three days at most; but for the storm we should
have been prepared for what befell.
Swift as a puma's leap it came. There was
that interval of moonless calm filled only
with the water's and the rigging's usual sounds,
then sudden movement, blows and snarling cries
and they had fallen on us with machete
and marlinspike. It was as though the very
air, the night itself were striking us.
Exhausted by the rigors of the storm,
we were no match for them. Our men went down
before the murderous Africans. Our loyal
Celestino ran from below with gun
and lantern and I saw, before the cane-
knife's wounding flash, Cinquez,
that surly brute who calls himself a prince,
directing, urging on the ghastly work.
He hacked the poor mulatto down, and then
he turned on me. The decks were slippery
when daylight finally came. It sickens me
to think of what I saw, of how these apes
threw overboard the butchered bodies of
our men, true Christians all, like so much jetsam.
Enough, enough. The rest is quickly told:
Cinquez was forced to spare the two of us
you see to steer the ship to Africa,
and we like phantoms doomed to rove the sea
voyaged east by day and west by night,
deceiving them, hoping for rescue,
prisoners on our own vessel, till
at length we drifted to the shores of this
your land, America, where we were freed
from our unspeakable misery. Now we
demand, good sirs, the extradition of
Cinquez and his accomplices to La
Havana. And it distresses us to know
there are so many here who seem inclined
to justify the mutiny of these blacks.
We find it paradoxical indeed
that you whose wealth, whose tree of liberty
are rooted in the labor of your slaves
should suffer the august John Quincey Adams
to speak with so much passion of the right
of chattel slaves to kill their lawful masters
and with his Roman rhetoric weave a hero's
garland for Cinquez. I tell you that
we are determined to return to Cuba
with our slaves and there see justice done.
Cinquez--
or let us say 'the Prince'--Cinquez shall die."
This long stanza is the telling of the Amistad’s surviving crew’s
ordeal- after the mutiny- in an American court. It’s fairly straight-forward,
but here serves the purpose of actually making clear this was just not some
fictive, wistful poem- but rooted in a true history.
The deep immortal human wish,
the timeless will:
Cinquez its deathless primaveral image,
life that transfigures many lives.
Voyage through death
to life upon these shores.
The ending then pans back up from the earthly court proceedings & we
end back in the omniscient. The reader is almost fly-like in listening to the
many sides of this singular event. Yet, most critics have misread the poem’s
ending as triumphal, whereas it is far more in line with the end of Runagate
Runagate. Another misreading has been the tendency to try to lump Middle
Passage in with epic poems, &/or pseudo-epics like T.S. Eliot’s The
Waste Land. Both are spurious & dubious claims. MP is far too short to
be epopee, + the lines themselves are lyrical in nature, not to mention that MP
exists in a world that- despite invocations- is essentially God-less. The lead
character has no smiling favor of a god to guide. The narrative is cobbled
mostly by the juxtaposition of wonderfully described events & memories- not
straight-forward narrative. As for the influence of TSE, or Hart Crane’s The
Bridge- again, these claims are overstated. Nowhere does TSE’s poem cohere
together a tale as well as RH’s, nor does it contain the lyrical heights that
MP does. As for HC, his poem is longer & actually does use lyric as a
narrative tool to a greater degree than MP does. But RH’s poem does have an
advantage over The Bridge in that his is based on actual history, &
not the poet’s own version of history. This allows for an emotional intensity
when the poems scopes in to a particular situation, whereas HC’s poem needs to
achieve that intensity through wordplay alone. Not that historicity should be a
reason for emotional intensity than fiction- but, let’s face it, in the real
poetic world of the last few decades this is how things have evolved; or
devolved. Another factor is how wisely RH approaches the tale- it is told from,
as far as I can tell, the perspectives of assorted white folk- the Amistad’s
crew, some court staff, & the occasional omniscient voice. Nowhere is there
a ‘black’ voice in this mini-black epic! How clever of this black poet to
use this poem not only to tell the tale that few knew, but tell it from POV’s
that are suspect. Your average reader & critic have never picked up on this
point, BUT it’s there, & slyly undermines the veracity of the speakers
within the poem, much as the breathlessness of the runagate slave in Runagate
Runagate mimics that character’s. In almost every poem of import in the RH
canon a good reader is rewarded by the active mind & desire to push
convention that RH possessed, & that almost no published poets today own.
This is partly why RH is relegated to the past & the comparisons crop
up with HC & TSE- but the TSE comparisons, especially, are wan. Middle
Passage is a far greater poem that The Waste Land- indeed any TSE
poem. The closest TSE ever came to a human emotional chord being struck was in
some of the better passages from the Four Quartets. Most of the rest of
TSE’s poems are fossils of a time when obscurantism was loved for its own
sake. Now, no reader of those poems gets actual pleasure from them. But RH’s
poems reward with every reading- not only for RH’s artistic props, but because
the poems are more viscerally ‘real’ to a reader- black, white, or whatever-
because they are based in real history. Believe me, I love Hart Crane’s work,
& will some day in the near future correct many of the mismythic woes that
plague him & his work, but RH’s poem deals in transfiguring the outer
reality into the inner recesses of the reader, while The Bridge does the
opposite- it takes HC’s inner psyche & paints it boldly across a
near-reality that may or may not have ever been- & for that poem’s sake
veracity does not matter. RH has less wiggle room. Yet, he never descends into
pedantry nor moralism- be that the she-devil interpretation of Harriet Tubman in
Runagate Runagate or the African complicity in enslaving their own
kinsmen that is explored in Middle Passage. A PC critic bent on fellating
the reputation of RH would doubtlessly label this tendency fearless, brave,
courageous, etc. To me, however, this is merely the manifestation of a great
artist going through the proper strokes needed to bring that greatness to
fruition in a particular work.
Another shot across MP’s bow has been that the poem is too bogged down
in history; that unlike The Waste Land or The Cantos of Ezra Pound
MP lacks a ‘superhistorical stance expressive of spiritual wholeness and a
transcendence of the dualities and tautologies within which Hayden's poem
remains marooned’. Of course, this is the polysyllabic nonsense of a
critic lacking anything to say. TWL is, for all its reputation, a grand exercise
in pedantry while TC are a total, unmitigated disaster- & a multilingual 1
to boot! Middle Passage, by contrast, is a lyric narrative masquing as a
mini-epic.
A final point on this poem, & RH as a poet. 1 of the great conflation
made in criticism of poetry is the terms great & important. They are 2
different things. There are great poets who are not particularly important. In
this camp would be an Edgar Allan Poe, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson, Rudyard
Kipling, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, & Countee Cullen, among some others.
These are poets for whom there is no doubt that great poetry sprang from. BUT,
their work did not have a profound effect on the advancement of the art form of
poetry. They were either technically superb craftsmen who were the best at their
craft but wrote on things, & in ways, similar to others. They were simply
better. Here would be Poe, Kipling, & Cullen. Or they were inventive &
unique, but while inspiring devotees, never gave rise to poetic heirs. Here is
Dickinson. Or they were hit & miss poets who often set back the art. Here
are Neruda- whose great personal, lyric, & love poems in a traditional vein
were counterbalanced by his atrociously puerile political &
‘experimental’ poems. Also in this category- despite his High Modernist
credentials, is Ezra Pound. Most of his great poems are in ancient forms, in
mock fashion. An envelope-pusher he was not- although he spurred TSE to greater
heights than he was capable of by himself. Then there is a Jeffers- a poet who
was superb; yet mystifyingly left little impact- most likely due to his
reclusive personae & political prophesying. Yet all these poets touched the
ineffable at least a few times in their careers.
A 2nd camp are those poets who are important but not really
great poets. Their poems had significant impact on the art, but the poets’
work, overall, rarely touched greatness. In this camp would reside a T.S. Eliot-
whose whole career consists of 5 or 6 near-great to great poems & a passel
of shit, William Carlos Williams- whose prosaic approach to poetry overshadowed
the fact that he only had 10 or 12 good 10 line or less poems in his arsenal,
Arthur Rimbaud- whose impact was more on the ‘cult of the poet’ than on the
art form, Anna Akhmatova- whose import was more as ‘functional state
treasure’ than persuasive writer, Allen Ginsberg- who has 12 or so great poems
that showed new boundaries & subject matter could work in poetry, but also
wrote a passel of utter doggerel, & Derek Walcott- who, despite early
promise, has a body of banal poetry, yet opened the way for several generations
of non-European poets’ poetry to find a Western audience. None of these poets
will stand too tall in the coming centuries for their work, but- their impact on
varied aspects of the art is undeniable.
This is the difference between the 2. Greatness is about how much the art
succeeds & stands alone, Import is on the non-artistic aspects of the work
& poet. Of course, a 3rd category exists for those poets that
were great & important. Whose excellence & import is undeniable. In this
camp would reside John Donne- the 1st English language poet with a
Modern mindset, if not vocabulary, Walt Whitman- whose work revolutionized
subject matter, & led to the war against formalism, Charles Baudelaire- who
did the same as Whitman in French, Stephane Mallarmé- whose fragmenting of form
led directly to Eliot, but whose work has held up far better despite being
older, Hart Crane- who created lyric epopee, & whose verse reached in new
directions in new ways- cracking the ekstasis of poetry open & truly
inventing the REAL Language poetry of the 20th Century, Marina
Tsvetaeva & Sylvia Plath- the 2 women who became iconic Feminist heroines
with legions of acolytes worldwide, yet wove together brilliant poetry despite
mental illnesses, & Wallace Stevens- whose great poetry has given heart to
legions of poetry lovers who appreciate games played with beauty &
philosophy.
I argue that RH will ultimately be seen in this 3rd camp. His
greatness in the art is obvious- just reread the poems quoted in this essay.
But, I admit he is currently a Neglected Poet. However, Stevens only recently
(in the last 20 years or so) displaced Eliot as the icon of Academia- nearly 30
years after his death. It’s still less than that since RH died. Plath won a
Pulitzer 2 decades after her death, & finally shed the Confessional &
husbandly baggage that weighed her down in the eyes of some myopic arbiters of
taste- read Bloom, Vendler, etc. RH’s poetry is important because it shows how
poetry is the only thing that matters in poetry, it gives great examples of how
to subvert the expected & reach heights before untouched, it synthesizes the
Classic with the Modern, & it shows that breadth in subject matter, form,
& approach DOES matter. There simply is no mistaking a Robert Hayden poem
for that of any other poet live or dead, YET his poems are accessible. Not in
the craven PC way that means they are chopped up bits of bad prose but in that
they do not go into unnecessary arcs. I defy a reader to find fat in his great
poetry. Every line contributes to the overall poem, & every line- if
changed- would have drastic effect on the overall end product.
Even in his lesser poems- those that are merely good &/or solid- 1
can see how the poems work to invoke thought. Here’s a modest little poem that
does have a few lesser lines & clichés:
Soledad
(And I, I am no longer of that world)
Naked, he lies in the blinded room
chainsmoking, cradled by drugs, by jazz
as never by any lover's cradling flesh.
Miles Davis coolly blows for him:
O pena negra, sensual Flamenco blues;
the red clay foxfire voice of Lady Day
(lady of the pure black magnolias)
sobsings her sorrow and loss and fare you well,
dryweeps the pain his treacherous jailers
have released him from for a while.
His fears and his unfinished self
await him down in the anywhere streets.
He hides on the dark side of the moon,
takes refuge in a stained-glass cell,
flies to a clockless country of crystal.
Only the ghost of Lady Day knows where
he is. Only the music. And he swings
oh swings: beyond complete immortal now.
The title is
Spanish for solitude or loneliness. That this lesser poem is about jazz is no
surprise. It’s name-dropping is its worst feature. But look at these images
& ideas: ‘dryweeps the pain’, ‘down in the anywhere streets’,
& ‘a clockless country of crystal’. Now look at the end. Is the
speaker saying he is at this moment beyond the totality of immortality, past
totality & suddenly immortal, beyond the deathlessness of the present, or a
# of other interpretations? In the last 4 words of an otherwise mediocre &
somewhat predictable jazz riff poem, RH has rescued the poem & made the
reader question if the clichés that start the poem going- ‘chainsmoking,
cradled by drugs, by jazz’, ‘his unfinished self’, & ‘the
dark side of the moon’, not to mention the poem’s trope- were merely
setups so the poem could confound in the end. I don’t think so, but this
ability to rise up from even mediocrity separates the greats from the
non-greats. Yet, more importantly, it places him as an important poet, because 1
can see how & why his lesser works fail. This is a type of accessibility
never discussed by critics. This is what augurs long-term import.
Let me end
this essay with some personal thoughts on RH. I never met the man, but he does
remind me in many ways, of another great & (in the long term) important
American poet, a poet who is also woefully Neglected. That poet is James Emanuel, who I pair with RH not because they are both black male poets
whose careers occupy a similar spot in world history, but because their
approaches to poetry are so similar. Both poets are adept in form & free
verse (dependent on the poems’ subject matter), both eschew ‘race poetry’
for the art of poetry, both have suffered reputational abuses at the hands of
Academia- both by white critics’ ignorance & (worse) by black critics’
vitriol, yet both men have bodies of published poetry that while relative slim,
are very uniform in quality, & have a breadth of style. I would argue that
these 2 poets are in the top 10 of published 20th Century American
poets. That they are so similar in career arcs & reputations, is due to
happenstance & coincidence- not race. Hopefully both men’s work will fare
far better in this century than in the last. 1 should note that at this time
last century Poetry was without knowledge of Emily Dickinson & Gerard Manley
Hopkins, while Walt Whitman lay in desuetude. Solace can be garnered, I guess,
in that racism had nothing to do with that state of affairs- merely stupidity,
which is almost always corrected. On that RH is no doubt looking down &
beaming.
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