Robert Hayden: Collected Prose

Author: Robert Hayden 

Publisher: University of Michigan Press (1984)

In his foreword to this volume, William Meredith says of the late poet Robert Hayden, "It was his work to share and enlighten the American Black experience, not to diminish it by rancor. This he did by the difficult, simple method of almost flawless art, an art which finally called so loud across the chasm of race that, at last, he was heard on both sides, reminding us of our humanity."

In Hayden's perception, "America seems destined to bring together all the people of the world. The country is already a kind of microcosm, and we are more and more international in outlook." The themes of universality and humanity so central to Hayden's poetry can be clearly witnessed in this collection of his prose, testimony to Robert Hayden's true contribution to American literature.