Supplementary Reading #2

Robert Hayden--Poem: "Those Winter Sundays"

Robert Hayden, born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, was raised in a slum called Paradise Valley. Hayden's parents separated soon after his birth and he became the foster child of Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden. Hayden's early reading of Harlem Renaissance poets such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, combined with his study of the English classics, informed the precision and originality of his poetry throughout his life. As William Meredith states: "Robert Hayden was a man as gifted in humanity as he was in poetry. There is scarcely a line of his which is not identifiable as an experience of black America, but he would not relinquish the title of American writer for any narrower identity." (www.afropoets.net/roberthayden.html)

Robert Hayden www.black-collegian.com /african/painted-voices/ hayden.shtml

Few of us like to get out of bed on those cold winter mornings, leaving the warm cozy coverings for the chilly, drafty air outside. Hayden's poem addresses one such chilly winter morning from his boyhood in Detroit, where the average HIGH temperature in the winter is below freezing (32°F)--that's "blueblack cold"!



Click here to access Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"

Click here for Hayden's reading of "Those Winter Sundays"



NEXT: Supplementary Reading #3