more than the African American community,
which saw the dramatic success of the civil rights
movement in the early part of the decade slow
down and appear to stall by the mid-1960s. This
led to the emergence of a more militant strain of
black activism, known at the time as ‘‘Black
Power,’’ under the leadership of such fiery figures
as Stokely Carmichael. The new young black
activists expected those in positions of authority
and prestige within the black community to speak
out aggressively against racism and in favor of
immediate political and social change. Hayden, a
quiet, dignified man who was devoted to the per-
fection of his chosen art form, refused to go along
with the demands that poetry written by black
writers should in effect become propaganda for a
particular political cause. Matters between Hay-
den and his detractors came to a head in 1966, the
year in which ‘‘Runagate Runagate’’ was pub-
lished in Selected Poems.Haydenatthattime
was a professor of English at Fisk University in
Nashville, Tennessee, a historically black college,
where he had been teaching since 1946. Fisk was
the venue for the First Black Writers’ Conference,
and Hayden found himself under direct attack by
some participants who felt that his poetic creed,
which he expressed during the conference as ‘‘the
beauty of perception given form... the art of say-
ing the impossible’’ (quoted by John Hatcher in
From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry
of Robert Hayden), was irrelevant for the times in
which they lived, which called for militant social
activism on behalf of a political cause. Hayden
was criticized for not being an effective role model
or teacher for black students. Hayden, however,
stood his ground. At the conference he read some
lines written by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats and
commented that he did not need to be Irish to
appreciate them. He insisted throughout his
career that he was not a ‘‘black poet’’ but simply
a black man who wrote poetry, and that he
should be judged not by his advocacy of a cause
but by the quality of his art.
Today, Hayden’s stature as an American
poet is securely established. Few would disagree
with the assessment of Fred M. Fetrow inRobert
Hayden, published just a few years after Hayden’s
death in 1980, that Hayden was ‘‘one of the most
sensitively acute and expansive chroniclers ofWHAT
DO I READ
NEXT? W. E. B. Dubois was one of the most prom-
inent African Americans of the twentieth cen-
tury. In his highly influential book,The Souls
of Black Folk, first published in 1903, he
opposed Booker T. Washington’s approach
to racial issues in favor of a more radical
program that demanded equal rights for
black Americans rather than accommoda-
tion to existing inequalities. Several modern
editions of this book are available.
Selected Poems (P. S.)by Gwendolyn Brooks
(2006) contains the best poetry of an African
American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in
1950 and was a contemporary of Hayden.
Brooks held Hayden’s poetry in high regard,
writing a very favorable review of hisSelected
Poemsin 1966.
The Vintage Book of African American Poetry,
edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony
Walton (2000), is an anthology of the work
of fifty-two African American poets. The
book covers a period of over two hundred
years, from eighteenth-century slaves to
poets born after World War II.
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes(1990)
presents the work of the leading poet of the
Harlem Renaissance and one of the influen-
ces on Hayden’s early work. When Hayden
met Hughes, Hughes told him to concen-
trate on developing his own voice.HAYDEN, A QUIET, DIGNIFIED MAN WHO
WAS DEVOTED TO THE PERFECTION OF HIS CHOSEN
ART FORM, REFUSED TO GO ALONG WITH THE
DEMANDS THAT POETRY WRITTEN BY BLACK
WRITERS SHOULD IN EFFECT BECOME PROPAGANDA
FOR A PARTICULAR POLITICAL CAUSE.’’Runagate Runagate