Robert Hayden
( August 4, 1913 – February 25, 1980)
He was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976–78, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office. Robert Hayden was praised for his work crafting of poems, the unique perspectives in his work, his exact language, and his absolute command of traditional poetic techniques and structures.
As a supporter of his religion’s teaching of the unity of humanity, Hayden could never embrace Black separatism. Thus the title poem of Words in the Mourning Time ends in a stirring plea in the name of all humanity:
Reclaim now, now renew the vision of
a human world where godliness
is…………………..
Robert Hayden died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1980, age 67.
In 2012 the U.S. Postal Service issued a pane of stamps featuring ten great Twentieth Century American Poets, including Hayden.