modern American history and culture.‘‘ How-
ever, it is interesting to return to that poem of
the 1960s, ‘‘Runagate Runagate,’’ and note how
well it measures up to Hayden’s goal of poetic
excellence, as distinct from its subject matter, and
also to ask the question: is the poem entirely
about African American concerns, or is there a
universal message in it also?
To begin with, the form of the poem, with its
swift-moving montage of different voices and
types of material, is unusual. It is hard to think
of anything that resembles it, other than Hay-
den’s own poem, ‘‘Middle Passage.’’ The poem
begins with a marvelous evocation of the struggle
of one representative slave as he runs and runs in
the night on a desperate mission of escape. As
commentators often note, there is a sense of con-
stant movement in these opening seven lines,
which are not only long but lack any punctua-
tion. The repetition of several key words creates
not only the dark atmosphere but also the sense
of the apparent endlessness of the slave’s trek.
One danger or difficulty after another presents
itself to him. The fact that lines 2, 3, and 4 begin
with the same two words, starting with the con-
junctionand, reinforces this effect. The present-
tense narration gives a sense of immediacy, and
the striking meter of the first line in particular
reflects accurately the picture that is being pre-
sented to the reader. The first foot of line 1 is a
spondee (two successive stressed syllables) and is
followed by two trochaic feet. A trochaic foot
consists of one stressed syllable followed by an
unstressed syllable. It is the opposite of the more
common iambic foot, in which an unstressed
syllable is followed by a stressed one. The iambic
foot might be thought of as the basic rhythm of
the English language, so variations from it are
easily noticeable. Trochaic meter is known as
‘‘falling meter,’’ as opposed to the ‘‘rising meter’’
of an iambic line. It provides exactly the right
effect in this first line, which is about the slave
stumbling and falling as he runs.
After these seven opening lines, snatches of
Negro spirituals appear, giving the poem its char-
acteristic sense of the coexistence in the slaves’
lives of suffering and jubilation, fear and hope,
sorrow and exultation. In fact, the trochee that
begins line 7 with the wordmorning,suggestiveof
light entering the darkness, has already set this
dynamic in motion. The coexistence of opposites,
the sense that life is a struggle between opposing
forces, is what lifts the poem beyond its African
American subject matter to embrace a universal
theme. The universality is hinted at in the presen-
tation of Harriet Tubman as a kind of mythic
heroine who carries within herself opposing val-
ues. She comes from the earth, like all humans,
but she also shines like a star, and is thus a beacon
light for others. Her back bears the scars of whip-
pings endured in childhood, and this might be
understood as a metaphor for the wounds that
all men and women, not only the African Amer-
ican slaves, carry in their struggle through life. To
be human is to be wounded, to be scarred, but
also to aspire to the freedom of the stars. As this
poem, so full of kinetic energy—which represents
the life force itself as it burns on toward its goal,
overcoming fear, pain, and injustice—moves to
its conclusion, the extended railroad and train
metaphor carries it to its emphatic last line, the
triple repetition ringing out like the triumphant
final chords of a Beethoven symphony. This of
course is not to deny that ‘‘Runagate Runagate’’
is primarily a poem that celebrates the indomita-
ble spirit of African Americans at one of the most
difficult times in their history, but it is also a
universal poem in the sense that it speaks to all,
black and white and all shades in between, who
cherish freedom, both political and spiritual, in
the land of the free—or in any land on the earth.
Source:Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on ‘‘Runagate
Runagate,’’ inPoetry for Students, Gale, Cengage Learn-
ing, 2010.Fred M. Fetrow
In the following excerpt, Fetrow suggests that bio-
graphical factors contribute to the sense of alien-
ation in Hayden’s poems, including ‘‘Runagate
Runagate.’’
Robert Hayden (1913–1980), the first black
poet to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library
of Congress (1976–1978), both experienced and
expressed the role of the ‘‘outsider,’’ coping with
personal demons of alienation while chronicling in
artistic objectivity modern man’s wandering ways
in a psychic ‘‘no man’s land.’’ Perhaps because he
was a minority in race, raised from infancy by
foster parents, a convert to a religious sect of
obscure and often misunderstood nature, and a
dedicated artist in a society which does not much
value poets, Robert Hayden found an affinity with
others outside the mainstream of ordinariness or
acceptability. As he often expressed his interest in
poetic characterization in terms of ‘‘baroque’’ per-
sonalities, so he crafted many poems about thoseRunagate Runagate