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Robert Hayden Biography

Robert Hayden (4 August 1913 – 25 February 1980) was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office.

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Robert Hayden Quotes

This freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth.

Air, Beautiful, Men, Terrible, Thing

Your presence was shore where I rested
released from the hoodoo of that dance, where I spoke
with my true voice again.

Dance, Hoodoo, Presence, Shore, Spokes, Voice

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new day. It just makes sense.

Dead, Mountain, New Day, Popped, Rising, Talking

[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality. . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns.

Definitions, Discovery, Grips, Poetry, Reality

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

Fall, Night, Rises, Running, Stumbles, Terror

Harriet Tubman, woman of earth, whipscarred, a summoning, a shinning

Earth, Shinning, Slavery, Summoning, Whipscarred, Woman

What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?

Austere, Know, Knows, Lonely, Office, Offices

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

Art, Escape, Order, Way

I believe it's true that one person can make a difference. But how much more difference 100 people make, or rather 99.

100, Believe, Differences, Make, People

We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.

Evil, Frightened, Human, Monsters, Political, Struggle

As well have a talon as a finger, a muzzle as a mouth, as well have a hollow as a heart.

Finger, Heart, Hollow, Mouths, Muzzle, Talon

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Discovery, Possibility, Rewriting, Writing

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 fire blazes. No one ever thanked him.

Early, Father, Fire, Labor, Sunday, Weather

Standing to America, bringing home black gold, black ivory, black seed.

America, Bringing, Home, Ivory, Seed, Standing

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

Bright, Dark, Kindness, Mouth, Moving, Names

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering, first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

Midnight, Sabre, Special, Track