Frederick Douglass

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1947

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Poem Analysis

Themes

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Related Poems

“In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden (1939)

A conventional tribute poem by Hayden’s mentor at the University of Michigan. Auden wrote the poem in memory of an Irish poet whose dilemma between his identity as a poet and as Irish influenced Hayden’s artistic development and dilemma between being an American poet and/or being a Black American poet. The poem reflects on a poet’s role in a culture at war, what Auden terms “the importance and noise of tomorrow” (Line 24), and how poetry impacts that struggle even though poets themselves may not man the barricades or take to the streets, a message not lost on Hayden.

“Runagate, Runagate” by Robert Hayden (1962)

This is a poem in celebration of another iconic freedom figure from 19th-century Black American history, and like Hayden’s sonnet to Douglass, is less about the person and more about that person’s impact. Here Hayden captures the essence of the countless people Tubman’s Underground Railroad network freed from enslavement through the use of fragmented voices that collectively celebrate the powerful pull of freedom.

“Negro” by Langston Hughes (1958)

This is an example of Black activist poetry. Written some 10 years after Hayden’s sonnet by one of the giants of the Harlem Renaissance and an influence on Hayden’s early development, “Negro” embraces Black identity with defiance and pride. Published at the height of the American civil rights movement, the poem, unlike Hayden’s, is an angry, immediate call to action, rather than Hayden’s more philosophical concept of the future and his endorsement of patience and anticipation.

Further Literary Resources

“Robert Hayden’s ‘American Journal’: A Multidimensional Analysis” by Christopher Buck (2008)

Although this article does not treat “Frederick Douglass” specifically, the argument is valuable. Among the articles written on Hayden, which tend to center on questions of his Blackness, this one approaches his poetry through the tenets and vision of his adopted Baha’i faith. The careful articulation of the basic beliefs of this religion can be applied to “Frederick Douglass” and account for the poem’s optimism that humanity, and by extension white America, is evolving into a generous and inclusive “Oneness.”

“Robert Hayden: The Transition Years, 1946-1948” by Robert Chrisman (2001)

The article uses Hayden’s transition into academia as a way to explore the poems he produced, among them “Frederick Douglass.” The poem reflects what Chrisman sees as Hayden’s delicate balance between committing himself to the political activism of other Black academics and his quiet faith in culture itself evolving without the help of activists into a better, higher plane. At Michigan, Hayden confronted the question of whether he was a Black man who happened to be a poet or a poet who happened to be a Black man.

“Robert Hayden’s “Frederick Douglass”: Form and Meaning in a Modern Sonnet” by Fred M. Fetrow (2001)

This is a line-by-line exploration of the poem that uses as the vehicle for its analysis how Hayden skews the traditional sonnet form as part of his quiet guerilla-style rebellion against the oppressive conditions of white America. Because the poem both is and is not a sonnet, Hayden reveals his familiarity (and competence) with the form and his willingness to co-opt it for his own purposes, like a jazz trio at the Blue Note riffing Bach.

Listen to Poem

Actor Diahann Carroll reads “Frederick Douglass”

Although iconic Emmy-nominated actor Diahann Carroll recorded the poem with an elegant and pitch-perfect delivery, Hayden’s own recitation of the poem, recorded for the Smithsonian Institute’s ambitious mid-century project to create an archive of American poets, is the definitive recitation. Available on YouTube, the recording features brief preliminary commentary by Hayden and then the recitation itself, a measured delivery of what Hayden knows is a mock sonnet (it makes one wish the recording included a visual element rather than the photo of Hayden). Listen as he lingers over the word “finally” (Line 1); how he mocks white people with the phrase “mumbo jumbo” (Line 6); and how he sustains all the rolling l’s and long vowels of the last two lines that give dignity not to Douglass’s legacy but to his vision.