America\'s Bicentennial Poem

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America’s Bicentennial Poem

Robert Hayden’s “American Journal” Christopher Buck Desert Rose Baha’i Institute Saturday, May 23, 2015 Afternoon Session

ART IS IMPORTANT Why?

AMERICA HONORS ITS FINEST POETS

Twentieth-Century Poets

First Day of Issue: April 21, 2012

ART IS IMPORTANT Bahá’í Writings “All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose.” — Abdu’l-Bahá. Qtd. Lady Blomfield, The Chosen Highway (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1954), p. 167.)

We need poets and writers for the Cause. … Some of the poems are written by very youthful persons yet they ring so true and give expression to such thoughts that one should halt and admire. In Persia, the Cause has given birth to poets that even non-Bahá’ís consider as great. We hope before long we will have similar persons arise in the West. — Letter, dated 2 January 1932 on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, letter, to an individual.

ROBERT HAYDEN

“AMERICAN JOURNAL” Life, Career & Contributions to America

Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden

Saginaw Valley College October 1972 Photo by David Smith

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/1 Legally, Robert Earl Hayden was never born. He had no birth certificate to show that Asa and Ruth Sheffey (born Gladys Finn), who separated before his birth, were his natural parents. So it was that Asa Bundy Sheffey came into this world, on 4 August 1913, in Paradise Valley, a ghetto on Detroit’s East Side. At eighteen months, the boy was given to next-door neighbors William and Sue Ellen Hayden, who reared and rechristened him. William “Pa” Hayden is immortalized in one of Robert’s most anthologized poems, Those Winter Sundays. He remained with what he thought were his adoptive parents until the age of twentyseven. In 1953 Robert was shocked to discover that the Haydens had never legally adopted him, contrary to their claim, and that he was really Asa Sheffey.

ROBERT HAYDEN

Those Winter Sundays Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmJYs6PQKVc

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 fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/2 At sixteen Hayden discovered, entirely by accident, the Harlem Renaissance poets in Alain Locke’s anthology, The New Negro (1925). Hayden was instantly drawn to Countee Cullen, who declined to call himself a “Negro poet”—an example the young poet would later follow. In 1938 Hayden was provisionally accepted into the graduate program in English at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There, he won the Summer Jules and Avery Hopwood Award for the elevenpoem Heart-Shape in the Dust, published in 1940 by Falcon, a local press.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/3 In 1939, Hayden gained local recognition at a Detroit United Auto Workers Union rally, when Hayden read his eight-page mass chant, “These Are My People.” Hayden was spontaneously proclaimed “People’s Poet” of Detroit. A study of “American Journal” will contribute to a fuller appreciation of Hayden’s role as a social poet.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/4 In June 1940, Hayden married Erma Inez Morris, a music teacher and concert pianist. She worked as a public school teacher in Detroit, supporting his lifestyle as a struggling artist. Eventually they decided that Hayden should go back to graduate school, University of Michigan. In 1941, Erma embraced the Bahá’í Faith In 1943, Hayden, too, joined the Bahá’ís, while still a graduate student.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/5 Later, Hayden took to heart advice from his mentor, W. H. Auden, against racial and political rhetoric. In 1944, Hayden earned his Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan. In 1946, he was appointed assistant professor of English at Fisk University, on the false premise that he would be appointed writer-in residence. Hayden was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1954 and to full Professor in 1961.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/6 In 1955, Figure of Time appeared. One poem, “The Prophet” (later published as “Bahá’u’lláh in the Garden of Ridvan”) is Hayden’s purest and fullest testimony of faith. A Ballad of Remembrance, his second collection, was published in 1962. On April 7, 1966, A Ballad of Remembrance was awarded, by unanimous vote, the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. With over 10,000 people from 37 nations attending, this literary prize was comparable to an Olympic gold medal.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/7 Hayden’s first publication by a commercial press, Selected Poems (1966), marked the start of a real career as a poet. Selected Poems led to several academic posts: 1967: Poet-in-Residence, Indiana State University. 1969: Visiting Poet at the University of Washington. 1971: Visiting Poet at the University of Connecticut. 1972: Visiting Poet at Dennison University. 1974: Visiting Poet at Connecticut College. In 1969, Hayden resigned from Fisk and taught at the University of Michigan until his death in 1980.

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/8 1970: Words in the Mourning Time. 1970: Russell Loines Award by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. 1972: The Night Blooming Cereus. 1975: Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems. 1975: Elected Fellow of the Academy of American Poets, with citation for “distinguished poetic achievement” and $10,000 stipend. 1976–1977: Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. 1977–1978: Reappointed Consultant in Poetry. Health was failing. 1977: Health and other concerns led to a nervous breakdown. 1978: American Journal was published. 1982: Dying of cancer, Hayden delivered an expanded version of American Journal to his publisher in person.

Robert Hayden

Ebony Magazine January 1978

ROBERT HAYDEN Life in Brief/9 See Christopher Buck, “Robert Hayden,” Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Edited by Jay Parini (New York: Oxford University Press), Vol. 2, pp. 177– 181. http://bahai-library.com/2723 47,966 hits since 12/2/2005. See also John Hatcher, From the Auroral Darkness: The Life and Poetry of Robert Hayden (Oxford, 1984). Critical of prior scholarship for polarizing Hayden’s dual perspectives as a poet and as a Bahá’í, Hatcher argues that Hayden’s poetry “is empowered by his Bahá’í perspective, not injured by it.”

POETRY AS SOCIAL COMMENTARY Robert Hayden as a Social Poet

POETRY AS SOCIAL COMMENTARY (From Michigan State University Syllabus) Poets are a strange breed. They write about life, usually their own. But some rise to the threshold of “social poets,” those voices of celebration and protest that quicken national pride yet prick its conscience. These bards and minstrels speak to us in voices that haunt and inspire. Their poems are living artifacts of American thought and culture that do not require a museum curator for their preservation. They simply need to be remembered, so that we can remember who we are as a people. As we read these poems, the mental pictures they evoke are each worth a thousand more words.

ROBERT HAYDEN

America’s Bicentennial Poet Laureate During America’s Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1976, Hayden served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, in the first of his two-term tenure (1976–77 and 1977–78). That same position later became known as “Poet Laureate of the United States” in 1985. As America’s Bicentennial poet laureate and the first African American poet laureate, Hayden rose to the occasion by offering a poem about America. That poem is “American Journal” (1976). “American Journal” may thus be regarded as America’s “Bicentennial poem.”

ROBERT HAYDEN

“AMERICAN JOURNAL” Introduction

AMERICAN JOURNAL Last Poem of Last Book

“American Journal” is title poem/last poem in Hayden’s last book of poems, American Journal (1978). American Journal was posthumously republished in 1982. This book,” Michael Harper explains, “would be something he [Hayden] would use as an indicator of his new poetic resolve to speak freely about America’s conundrum, race and identity.”

AMERICAN JOURNAL Plot Device

“American Journal” purports to be the field notes of a Martian observer. As if by architectonic design, “American Journal” appears immediately after “Astronauts”, the penultimate piece in American Journal. “Astronauts” prepares the reader to suspend disbelief when“[American Journal]” introduces the alien. By his shape-shifting powers, the Martian disguises himself in an array of human personas. He then reports his findings to his superiors, “the Counselors.”

AMERICAN JOURNAL Brachylogy as Poetic Device

The alien’s journal about America (hence the title, “American Journal”) is recorded in truncated form—largely by the poetic device known as brachylogy: “Conciseness of speech, laconism; concr. a condensed expression.” —Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

AMERICAN VOICE/1 [Question] You’ve mentioned in interviews the essentially American voice of Robert Hayden’s poetry; can you talk a bit about what it means to write in an “American” voice and how that term might be applied to your own work? What does it mean to have an “American” voice? YK: A good example of that is probably one of Hayden’s last poems, “American Journal.” There’s vernacular within the context of that poem, and the poem is actually spoken by someone from out of this world—from Mars or somewhere like that, from the universe beyond—and he sort of comes into this world speaking the vernacular of black expression.

AMERICAN VOICE/2 But also there’s something else within the context of that voice; there’s a marriage of the vernacular with a very educated diction as well. So, in a certain sense, I’ve seen this alien from another world as a code-switcher, and that’s what Hayden is. That’s what I mean by American voice, he has that capacity to be in two worlds at once—at least two worlds at once, or even more than two worlds at once—that ability to incorporate, especially, Anglo-Saxon diction into those poems. —Terrance Hayes, “American Voices and the Cakewalk of Language: Yusef Komunyakaa in Conversation with Terrance Hayes.” Black Renaissance 5.1 (Spring 2003): 113.

ROBERT HAYDEN

“AMERICAN JOURNAL” Reading

Robert Hayden, Saginaw Valley College, October 1972. Photo by David Smith.

“AMERICA’S BICENTENNIAL POEM” Michael S. Harper

Letter from Michael S. Harper to Robert Hayden (June 15, 1976): “Don’t forget the Henson poem(s), and the Bicentennial poem you read on commencement weekend.” — Michael S. Harper & Robert Hayden, “Robert Hayden and Michael S. Harper: A Literary Friendship: A Special Section.” Callaloo 17.4 (1994): 980–1016 [1009].

ROBERT HAYDEN

“AMERICAN JOURNAL” Analysis

L–R: Riaz & Diane Taherzadeh, Robert & Erma Hayden, and Abbas Furutan. (Photo by David Smith.)

AMERICAN JOURNAL Social Maturity

Implicit in “[American Journal]” is this thesis: Social maturity is coefficient with human solidarity. This thesis unifies the various kinds of identity that this compressed and kaleidoscopic poem treats. As a literary tube of mirrors, “American Journal” implicitly describes social identities that render the American experience decidedly multidimensional.

DIMENSIONS OF IDENTITY in “American Journal” Internal evidence suggests that Hayden treats American identity in nine dimensions: (1) Landscape Identity; (2) Alien (Individual) Identity; (3) Racial Identity; (4) Political Identity; (5) Class Identity; (6) Material Identity; (7) Religious Identity; (8) American (National) Identity; (9) Human Identity.

LANDSCAPE IDENTITY Origin

oceans deserts mountains grain fields canyons / forests variousness of landscapes weathers / sun light moon light as at home much here is / beautiful dream like vistas reminding me of / home item have seen the rock place known / as garden of the gods and sacred to the first / indigenes. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 26– 32.

ALIEN IDENTITY Individualism

The Counselors would never permit such barbarous / confusion they know what is best for our sereni / ty we are an ancient race and have outgrown / illusions cherished here item their vaunted / liberty no body pushes me around i have heard / them say. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 61–66

RACIAL IDENTITY Pride and Prejudice

white black / red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering / distinctions by which they live by which they / justify their cruelties to one another. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 7–10.

POLITICAL IDENTITY Partisanship

crowds gathering in the streets today for some / reason obscure to me noise and violent motion / repulsive physical contact sentinels pigs / i heard them called with flailing clubs rage / and bleeding and frenzy and screaming machines / wailing unbearable decibels; why should we sanction / old hypocrisies thus dissenters The Counse / lors would silence them. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 53–58; 82–84.

CLASS IDENTITY The American Dream

something they call the american dream sure / we still believe in it i guess an earth man / in the tavern said irregardless of the some / times night mare facts we always try to double / talk our way around and its okay the dreams / okay and means whats good could be a damn sight / better means every body in the good old u s a / should have the chance to get ahead or at least / should have three squares a day; they boast of in their ignorant pride have seen / the squalid ghettoes in their violent cities / paradox on paradox. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 36–44; 65–70.

MATERIAL IDENTITY Technocratic Materialism

like us they have created a veritable populace / of machines that serve and soothe and pamper / and entertain we have seen their flags and / foot prints on the moon also the intricate / rubbish left behind a wastefully ingenious / people”; more faithful to their machine made gods / technologists their shamans. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 17– 22; 24–25.

RELIGIOUS IDENTITY Mysticism

many it appears worship the Unknowable / Essence the same for them as for us. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 22–23.

AMERICAN IDENTITY Nationalism

faith uniquely theirs blonde miss teen age / america waving from a red white and blue flower / float as the goddess of liberty; parades fireworks displays video spectacles / much grandiloquence much buying and selling / they are celebrating their history earth men / in antique uniforms play at the carnage whereby / the americans achieved identity; america as much a problem in metaphysics as / it is a nation. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 78–80; 72– 76; 99–100.

INTEGRATIVE (HUMAN) IDENTITY Globalism

do they indeed know what or who / they are do not seem to yet no other beings / in the universe make more extravagant claims / for their importance and identity. — Hayden, “American Journal,” lines 13–16.

ROBERT HAYDEN

“AMERICAN JOURNAL” Conclusion

CONCLUSION/1 In the modernist collage of anecdotal scenes and sustained ironies that comprise “American Journal,” these nine dimensions operate as a multifaceted prism of American mentality and potentiality. On viewing Hayden’s “[American Journal]” through this dimensional prism, America emerges as a work-in-progress—episodically revised by crisis after crisis—an experiment through which the meaning of humanity may be universalized.

CONCLUSION/2 This “work” will progress until it reaches a stage in which the interplay of competing identities is seen as a stable matrix—an ideal array of integrative identities (reflecting Hayden’s general orientation as a Bahá’í). This optic will apply to the inarticulate yet implicitly unitive moral of “American Journal”—a message in a bottle, as it were. America, in the poet’s musing, is caught up in a socially adolescent identity crisis. America has yet to mature until it resolves its fundamental identity crisis. This, in the broader context, is a defining social problematic of the world at large.

CONCLUSION/3 Our special thesis is that “America” itself—as portrayed in “American Journal” and as analytically illuminated by the nine dimensions previously described—operates topically and tropically as an emblematic problematic in humanity. The problem is not with any identity in particular. It is when particular identities alienate. In composing “American Journal,” Hayden—who is acutely aware of this “strangering” or schisming dynamic—contrives a reconnaissance mission involving a fictive visit by a man from Mars. An inverse of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005, Hayden launches his own probe of planet Earth, to explore American alienation through the eyes of an alien from outer space, who defines the core and refines the crux of American identity.

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