Who is Robert Hayden? A Biography of the Heralded African American Poet

If it is true that great men are borne out of adverse conditions, then Robert Hayden is truly an example of such a truth. Although not the greatest of all men, he was a great poet, not the least in the technical sense, and like, other Balck American poets, came to show the world the African American situation in America.

Hayden was born as Asa Bundy Sheffey to Asa and Ruth Sheffey. While a baby's birth may serve to solidify families, this was not the case with Hayden's parents. From the very moment Hayden was brought to the conscious world, he had been faced with turbulent situations, the first being his biological parent's decision to part ways.

After his parents' separation Hayden moved to Paradise Valley, a ghetto in Detroit where he was taken in and raised by his foster parents, William and Sue Ellen Hayden. Even with new parents however, Hayden's childhood seemed to have turned for the worse.

Just like his biological parents, Hayden's foster parents had a difficult marriage. He had often witnessed marital disputes and even became the victim of beatings. Added to this violent home environment was his biological mother's constant fight to emotionally win over Hayden. Because of this childhood situation, Hayden suffered extreme and harmful periods of depression.

Outside the family sphere, Hayden fared no better and was constantly pushed away by young people his age because he was not physically attractive, being near sighted and slight in build. It was then that Hayden compensated for the lack of good family and social relations by developing an intense appetite for reading, something that would be crucial to his development as a poet.

In 1936, he began researching on the history and culture of his race while working for the Federal Writers' Project. In 1938 Hayden left the Project and married Erma Inez Morris in 1940, subsequently converting to his wife's Baha'i Faith. In the same year that he married Morris, he published Heart Shape in the Dust. He went on to receive a Hopwood Award while enrolled at the University of Michigan where, during his graduate studies, he met and was mentored by W.H. Auden. After finishing his studies, Hayden went on to teach for twenty-three years at Fisk University.

As a writer, Hayden has been particularly known and acclaimed for his exceptional technical skill and the use of that skill in bringing to poetic light the social and political situation of the African American race. After his first publication, Hayden released his other works among which were The Lion and the Archer (1948), The Lion and the Archer, Figures of Time: Poems (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), Selected Poems (1966), Words in the Mourning Time (1970), Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), Angle of Ascent (1975), American Journal (1978) and Collected Poems (1985).

In 1975, Hayden was accepted into the American Academy of Poets and in the following year became the Library of Congress' poetry consultant.

At the age of 66, Hayden died Ann Arbor, Michigan.