Robert Hayden— Seeking Tranquility

Born the son of a struggling couple, Ruth and Asa Sheffey (they separated soon after his birth,) Hayden was taken in by a foster family—Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden—and grew up in a Detroit ghetto nicknamed "Paradise Valley." The Haydens' continually contentious marriage, coupled with Ruth Sheffey’s competition for young Hayden's affections, made for a traumatic childhood. Witnessing fights and suffering beatings, Hayden lived in a house fraught with 'chronic angers;' the effects would stay with the poet throughout his adulthood. His childhood traumas resulted in debilitating bouts of depression which be later called "my dark nights of the soul." Because he was nearsighted and slight of stature, he was often ostracized by his peer group. As a response both to his household and peers, Hayden read voraciously, developing both ear and eye for transformative qualities in literature.

Robert Hayden remains one of the most technically gifted and conceptually expansive poets in American and African American letters. Attending to the specificities of race and culture, 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. An award-winning poet of voice, symbol, and lyricism, Hayden's poetry celebrates human essence.

Robert Hayden has always been and will always be one of my favorite poets. An artist, who managed to paint with words the human condition, and mankind’s struggle with life and its everyday atrocities and loves, in a way that few can compete with; his poetry will shine forever within the shrine of artistic literature.

One of my favorite poems by Hayden, and it is still, very much, speaks to the conditions of our times is, “Monet’s Waterlilies.”

Monet's Waterlilies

Today as the news from Selma and Saigon

poisons the air like fallout,

I come again to see

the serene, great picture that I love.

Here space and time exist in light

the eye like the eye of faith believes.

The seen, the known

dissolve in iridescence, become

illusive flesh of light

that was not, was, forever is.

O light beheld as through refracting tears.

Here is the aura of that world

each of us has lost.

Here is the shadow of its joy.

Robert Hayden

Monet’s Waterlilies”: Seeking Tranquility

Robert Hayden’s poem, “Monet’s Waterlilies” was written in one of the most turbulent eras that this country has ever known. As if daily reports from Saigon, of the escalating numbers of deaths of young American soldiers, and of supposed atrocities being inflected on innocent civilian’s weren’t enough, there was civil unrest of an extreme nature taking place, primarily, in the southern United States; people were dying in the streets of Selma, Alabama. On that day in 1966, that Robert Hayden’s poem speaks of, it seems that the speaker is seeking sanctuary, apparently in a museum, where he finds peace and tranquility in Monet’s painting “Waterlilies.”

In such trying times as Hayden portrays, “Today as the news from Selma and Saigon poisons the air like fallout…” (1 & 2) most of us seek some form of relief from the insanity. The poems speaker does just that “…I come again to see the serene great picture that I love…” (3 & 4). Lines one and two are so powerful, and the second line, “…poisons the air like fallout…” (2) is so profound in that it speaks for so many of us who see violence as a poison.

As an impressionist painter, Monet depended on light and shadows to bring his paintings to life, allowing the observer to be drawn into the painting. When the speaker says, “Here space and time exist in light…” (5) he is being drawn in to the painting; permitting himself to find liberation from the disconcerting news of the day; time no longer exist and the space his mind occupies, at the moment, is all there is; a perfect world.

The speaker says, “…the eye like the eye of faith believes.” (6); what he is saying here is that, the eye, while viewing the painting, believes that peace and the waterlilies literally exist, and live within the canvas; just as we must have faith in our fellow man in spite of ourselves.

What our eye sees is what our mind knows exist, even though in the impressionist painting, as in life, it is not always clear that any beauty, or good, exists, “The seen, the known dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light…” (7, 8 & 9). In such troubling times, as the mid-nineteen-sixties, it seemed that no goodness existed in man, though it did, and will for all time, “That was not, was, forever is.” (10). Just as the speaker allows his minds eye to see the waterlilies, he can also see the goodness in mankind, in spite of the truth of the day.

Although the speaker can see that goodness does exist in mankind, something is missing; that something is our innocence, “O light beheld as through refracting tears.” (11). The innocence of the nineteen-fifties was gone, “Here is the aura of the world each of us has lost.” (12 & 13) and a kind of darkness seemed to own this day in 1966. Evil seemed to overshadow the goodness and innocence of the previous decade, “Here is the shadow of its joy.” (14).

You can’t have true joy without sorrow, otherwise, how would you recognize it? In such maddening times, as when Hayden wrote “Monet’s Waterlelies”, 1966, we must seek to remember that there is still beauty and good in the world, and if that means going to a museum and allowing yourself to be consumed by the beauty of art, as in Hayden’s poem, then by all means, do so; for without calm and serenity in our lives, we can become a part of the insanity that surrounds us.

Copyright © 2006