Friday, January 8, 2016

Robert Hayden Selected Poems - Gates

"Robert Hayden was an American poet, essayist, 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."

In his book of Selected Poems, I saw that almost all of the themes involved an intimate darkness, and many of them involved love. In his poem "The Lions," I think he creates an analogy for the greed humans have for power. He uses the lions as kings of the kingdom, and how he wishes to be a king and to have "Holy Holy" cry before him. This was hard.



"Robert Hayden." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 08 Jan. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hayden>.
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1 comment:

  1. Nell WhitmanJanuary 20, 2016 at 7:20 AM

    https://books.google.com/books?id=84J64nOuZ28C&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=%22the+lions%22+Robert+Hayden&source=bl&ots=WUHFWfV710&sig=t1mT_66SQOzusqvHfLsBO4Zj78U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibzcbj1LjKAhWlm4MKHaLVAJQQ6AEIMzAE#v=onepage&q=%22the%20lions%22%20Robert%20Hayden&f=false I had to go digging to find the poem. Post and cite it so we can study it together and dig for an interpretation. I agree. It is hard. Could the lions symbolize words that he commands?

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