Within the poetic works of Dudley Randall and Robert Hayden are the influences of their livelihood and culture. Naomi Long Madgett, in her article “Dudley Randall’s Life and Career” discloses much of Randall’s influence. She explains Randall takes much influence from the experiences of his own life, recalling many such events as his employment in a foundry as recalled in “George” (Poem Counterpoem), and his military service during World War II as reflected in his poems “Coral Atoll” and “Pacific Epitapns” (More to Remember). Furthermore, Madgett tells of Randall’s identification with Africa which was “enhanced by his association with poet Margaret Esse Danner”, and his “study in Ghana in 1970”, both evident in Randall’s poem “African Suite” (After the Killing) (Dudley Randall’s Life and Career). Similarly, Robert Hayden’s use of his own culture’s affairs as a springboard for his work is respected and well known. Looking at Hayden’s work, Mark A. Sanders, in his article “About Hayden’s Life and Career,” writes, “Hayden's poetry takes up the sobering concerns of African American social and political plight; yet his poetry posits race as a means through which one contemplates the expansive possibilities of language, and the transformational power of art” (About Hayden’s Life and Career). Knowing wherein the influence of each of these two poets lie allows us to further investigate African-American poetry and culture as a whole. Within this essay I will be exclusively looking at Randall and Heyden’s poetry and further developing what both Madgett and Sanders discuss in their articles. By doing so I will be able to investigate the social context in which both Randall and Hayden were present, the role these poems played within capturing the African-American image, and how the African-American perspective contributes to Modernist ideals.
In the case of both poets, there is immediacy in acknowledging their skin-color and the effects it has on the poems subject matter. Neither poet avoids making the context of their race known, but rather use their race as a tool in which context is formed. This approach contributes greatly to the Modernist ideals of relevancy. Both Randall and Hayden make use of their skin-color within their works because issues dealing with prejudice, self-image/worth, were (and still are) topics relevant and pertinent to discussion. Randall engages in the topic of relevancy directly in his poem “A Poet is Not a Jukebox”. The poem is a discussion between Randall and an unnamed ‘dear friend’, wherein the friend, in response to a love poem that Randall had written, asks, “But why not write about the riot in Miami?” (Line 4). His response is, “Telling a Black poet what he ought to write is like some Commissar of Culture in Russia telling a Poet He’d better write about the new steel furnaces in the Novobigorsk region…” and, “Yeah, I write about love. What’s wrong with love? If we had more loving, we’d have more Black babies to become brothers and sisters and build the black family” (Lines 11-13, 33-35). In this poem, Randall both acknowledges current events not only in relation to America, but also to events globally whilst maintaining the notion that broad themes of love transcend the relevancy of the riot in Miami. Randall’s use of his own race within the poem regiments his voice and thoughts to those of the Black community. Similarly, Hayden takes the relevancy of plight of the African-American activist in his poem “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)” into consideration, using renowned activist Malcolm X as the topics of his poems discussion. Hayden takes Malcolm X’s personal battle of protest and freedom, “As Home Boy, as Dee-troit Red, he fled his name, became the quarry of his own obsessed pursuit,” and layers it with articles of it’s time period, “He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped, zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks in the hot rose and reefer glow,” therefore, exposing the time period from an African-American perspective (Lines 8-10, 11-13).
Lorenzo Thomas, in his essay “‘Communicating By Horns’: Jazz and Redemption in the Poetry of the Beats and the Black Arts Movement,” discusses and verifies the importance of social relevancy within art, specifically that of the Black arts movements. Though Thomas’ central focus is the Jazz movement of the 1950’s and it’s importance to the Black-American image, “For the poets of the 1950s "Beat Generation" and the militant Black Arts Movement of the 1960s And '70s, jazz is perceived as a more significant social critique of an oppressive social structure,” he links Black poetry’s affiliation with Jazz, such as Black poet Bob Kaufman’s influence of Jazz through his poetic works (Communication By Horns). Thomas writes, “In Kaufman's poem "Countess Erica Blaise: Chorus," jazz is "Africa's other face, stranded--in America, yet to be saved" (Ancient Rain 12)” (Communication). The ties of social relevancy that Thomas makes to Kaufman’s work (along with others), and that of Jazz, can be made with both Randall and Hayden’s work as well, using their medium as a social critique, as a projection of their personal experience, and as a form of liberating the Black society. This is because African-American Modernist Poets like Randall and Hayden where the ones who voiced the way of thought that became the “Beat Generation” that Thomas describes. Thomas illustrates the principles of the Beat Generation and the Black arts, a movement heavily impacted by social commentary and activism, with Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art”, a poem that defines the goals of the Black Artist.
Baraka’s “Black Art” states, “We want live words of the hip world live flesh & coursing blood,” which uses vocabulary of the time to disclose ideas of activism amongst the African-American society, “ we want "poems that kill."” (Lines 9-11, 19). Both the argument that Baraka makes within “Black Art” and the style in which Baraka voices the poem position Black Art as one whose objectives are political and significant to the current state of the Black society. Links can be made to Randall’s most well known poem “The Ballad of Birmingham”, which was a response to the 1963 bombing of a Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Hayden’s “Runagate Runagate”, which tells of the Underground Railroad (historical, yet still pertinent to the African-American Identity). With Modernist poetry it is important to not only look at what is being written, but also the way in which each poem is written to understand the context of the times in which the author existed. Baraka’s “Black Art” calls for violence, and is written violently; therefore we can conclude the violence of the times in which this poem was written. When we look at Randall’s “Rabaul”, or Hayden’s “Monet’s Waterlillies”, we note the essence of sadness of the current situations depicted within the poems, due to the bluntness and bleakness in the way these poems are written. “Rabaul” makes the comparison of fighting for equality whether it is on one’s own soil or the soil of another nation. Randall concludes that there is indeed no difference from those fighting in distant lands for freedom and democracy, than the oppressed in America fighting for their own freedom. In “Monet’s Waterlillies”, Hayden equally compares the events of Saigon during the war to the civil unrest of Selma, Alabama. Both works depict the aggression of the times in which they were written by what they say and how they say it; both Randall and Hayden existed during a time of racial segregation, oppression, and within their work there is indication of this.
Processing the works of Dudley Randall and Robert Hayden allows us to understand further developments of the African-American expression for rights and freedoms through artistry. With the Modernist movement, sprung from post-war discourse, idealisms formed by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, etc., laid the foundation for the writings of Dudley Randall and Robert Hayden. As well, reading Randall’s “Booker T. and W.E.B.” or “Langston Blues”, shows the unity and affiliation of the African-American community within the literary world. Through this fight for racial tolerance and justice, or tolerance in general no matter the race, came the Beat Generation, which, come the 60’s then expanded into Hippie counterculture. Looking at Randall and Hayden is equal to looking at two small pieces of a larger puzzle, therefore enabling us to navigate through the history of modern poetry and it’s affiliation to the Black experience.
Work Citiation
Randall, Dudley. "Dudley Randall." Modern Poems. Ed. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989. P. 490-494 Print.
Hayden, Robert. "Robert Hayden." Modern Poems. Ed. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989. P. 484-490 Print.
Madgett, Naomi Long. “Dudley Randall’s Life and Career.” Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press, 8/15/00/ Web. 14 Mar 2011.
Sanders, Mark A. “About Hayden’s Life and Career.” Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press, 1997 Web. 11 Mar 2011.
Lorenzo Thomas, “‘Communicating By Horns’: Jazz and Redemption in the Poetry of the Beats and the Black Arts Movement,” African American Review.
Ennis, D. L. “Robert Hayden – Seeking Tranquility.” American Chronicle. Ultio, LLC, 8/19/06 Web. 11 Mar 2011.
Baraka, Amiri. “Black Art”. ChickenBones: A Journal. Nathanial Turner, 02/23/08 Web. 13 Mar 2011.
Archive. “Poems of Dudley Randall - Works.” PoemHunter. 22 Feb 2011
< http://www.poemhunter.com/dudley-randall/poems/>
Archive. “Poems of Robert Hayden - Works.” PoemHunter. 22 Feb 2011
< http://www.poemhunter.com/dudley-randall/poems/>
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