Recalling Robert Hayden
by David Cope
I studied poetry under Robert Hayden for two years
during my undergraduate days at Michigan, but Robert not only taught me that
the art was a discipline demanding exact expression, but more importantly he
showed me the history never taught in schools in those days. Hayden's "Middle Passage" tells the
story of Cinquez decades before Steven Spielberg and
Debbie Allen brought it to the silver screen, but it's also a poem that
utilizes the kinds of cultural references and refusal of closure typical of
modern masterpieces like Eliot's "The Waste Land" and Pound's
"Cantos." Most important for
me was his insistence on the need for direct action if one is to be free: themes typical of both "Middle
Passage" and "Runagate Runagate," and
most forcefully expressed in his sonnet celebrating the example of Frederick
Douglass. The Poet laureate/
librarianship of Congress was offered to Hayden in 1968 or 1969: he would have been the first African American
to hold that honor, but he had to turn it down because he was contracted to
teach at Michigan during that period. It
was a tough choice for him, but he never allowed that to get in the way of his
duties to us, his students. Robert was
one of the most sensitive, thoughtful profs I ever had—even brought the proof
sheets of his Words in the Mourning Time
to class, to show us how a poet and editor work together. He also gave us, I think, the first public
reading of the title poem, one of the greatest elegies in all American literature,
written for Martin King Jr. and for Robert Kennedy—and for America itself in
the heart of its wounded and bloodied dream.
I feel honored and lucky to have had him for my teacher for two years in
Ann Arbor: there are those who touch our
lives deeply in ways that reverberate for years, and Robert Hayden was such a
one.