Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, in 1913, and his early life was marked by instability. His parents separated shortly after he was born, and he was raised by neighbors William and Sue Ellen Hayden, adopting their surname later on. The household was poor and often tumultuous, and Hayden's severely impaired eyesight kept him from engaging in the rough and tumble of childhood like other kids. As a result, he turned inward, finding solace in books.
He studied at Detroit City College and later attended the University of Michigan, where he worked with W.H. Auden. That mentorship was significant. Auden encouraged him to pursue formal precision, and Hayden took that to heart—his poems are carefully constructed, meticulously joined, and never loose. He dedicated years to refining the long historical poem "Middle Passage," revising it over decades until it reached the form most readers recognize today. This level of patience was typical for him; Hayden was not a poet who hurried his craft.
“For many years, he taught at Fisk University in Nashville, a historically Black institution, before returning to the University of Michigan as a professor.”
His time at Fisk was fruitful, but not without its challenges. He was a Bahá'í, a faith he embraced in the 1940s, and its teachings—the oneness of humanity and the rejection of racial separatism—sometimes put him at odds with writers of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, who advocated for a more explicitly nationalist approach. Hayden resisted being labeled solely as a "Black poet," insisting on his identity as a poet in its entirety. This stance cost him some support at the time, but history has largely validated his commitment to a broader artistic identity.
Recognition came gradually but ultimately in abundance. He won the Grand Prize for Poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966, and his collection "Words in the Mourning Time" garnered him wider acclaim. In 1976, he was appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—the role now known as US Poet Laureate—becoming the first African-American writer to hold this position. He served two terms.
