Collected Poems

Robert Hayden (1913-1980) was one of the most important African-American poets of the twentieth century. He left behind an exquisite body of work, collected in this definitive edition, including American Journal, which was nominated for a National Book Award in its first publication. An introduction by Arnold Rampersad provides a biographical portrait of Hayden and a critical context in which to understand his poetry.

Robert Hayden was a fellow of the American Academy of Poets, a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and a professor of English at the University of Michigan. He received numerous awards for his poetry in his lifetime, among them to Hopwood Awards, the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, and the Russell Loines Award for distinguished poetic achievement from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Arnold Rampersad is Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton University.

Robert Hayden received numerous awards including a Hopwood Award, the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, and the Russell Loines Award for distinguished poetic achievement from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Frederick Glaysher studied writing under a private tutorial with Robert Hayden at the University of Michigan, from which he holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, the latter in English. The author and editor of several works, he edited Hayden’s Collected Prose as well as the Collected Poems. Robert Hayden is a character in Glaysher’s recently published epic poem, The Parliament of Poets, partly set on the moon, at the landing site of Apollo 11.

Arnold Rampersad (Ph.D. Harvard) is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He is co-editor (with Deborah E. McDowell) of Slavery and the Literary Imagination, and editor of the definitive Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. He is the author of the two-volume biography The Life of Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson: A Biography, and co-author (with Arthur Ashe) of Days of Grace: A Memoir. He is also editor of “The Harlem Renaissance.”