Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was an American poet whose work examined history, memory, family, and Black experience. Angle of Ascent, issued by Liveright in 1975, gathers new and selected poems from a career that included A Ballad of Remembrance and Words in the Mourning Time. The fuller published title, Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems, identifies the volume as both a retrospective and a statement of practice. Its selection joins poetry rooted in historical research with intimate work about childhood life. Hayden taught at Fisk University and the University of Michigan. In 1976 he became the first Black writer appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the office now called Poet Laureate. The collection appeared just before that appointment and presented the range of his achievement in one volume.