Robert Hayan Poetry Analysis

Poetry is utilized as way for people to express their feeling in a different way. There is more to it than rhythm schemes and different tones. African Americans have utilized poetry as voice because they never had one during slavery and segregation era. The Angles of Ascent: an anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry has showed their respect for the many poets that are recognized within this anthology. There are over five hundred poems that can help create a vision of what is like years ago. However, there are also poems by artist who are still alive and able to make a connection with their people. The poems that will be focused on will be Robert Hayden’s For a Young Artist, Bobb Hamilton’s Poem to a Nigger Cop, Amiri Baraka’s Black Art, and Thomas Sayers Ellis’s All Their Stanzas Look. All these poems genuinely have something in common, they all refer to change and each poet demonstrates and analyzes why African Americans need to be and stay different. Robert Hayden’s For a Young Artist utilizes key components in his stanzas to illustrate a message to his readers. For example: .. from the cattle-prod, wings jerking, lifts hos grizzled head, regarding all with searching eyes. Hayden refers to a bird to describe the emotion of a young artist. This poem pertains to individuals falling but not staying down to fulfill their dreams. The bird had fell from the sky but did not give up and was still looking for a way out after everything that had just happened to him. To make in life as an artist is not the easiest thing to do, this poem can be listed as a motivation to people who do feel like giving up when things get to tough. The hawk however, “silken rustling in the air, the angle of ascent achieved” (Hayden, 14). The hawk was able to overcome his/her obstacle and did not allow it to take over what he or she wanted to do. As African Americans we tend to give excuses as to why we cannot achieve the dreams we want due to lack of determination. However, Hayden merely states that it is up to whomever to make their dreams come true unrelatedly of what may come in the way of it. Bobb Hamilton’s Poem to A Nigger Cop addresses a negative notation of a black man being a part of law enforcement. Hamilton begins with asking a rhetoric question, while answering it himself: You really gonna uphold the law? What you gonna do when you see Your Mama… You mean to tell me you gonna Bang your own mother? Hamilton feels that a black man should not be under law enforcement after what has happened to his people. …show more content…
We were enslaved by this society, treated like objects and was stripped of our identity by the white people. The law enforcement is solely based to tear a nigger down, which is seen to be a way of conformity to live protected. However, Hamilton also tries to manipulate the readers as to why the cop shooting his mother who stole “a TV set that is tied up in a bandana trying to catch a train to Springfield Gardens” (Hamilton, 50). This situation then becomes a conflicting dilemma for the cop because he now has to choose between the law and his own mother. Nonetheless regardless of your affiliation with the suspect you have to do your job. But, then Hamilton probably utilizes this situation to create a conflicting scenario to tell African Americans as to why they do not need to be a part of the law enforcement. Amiri Baraka’s Black Art defines that black art needs to be a prominent topic in the black community. Baraka wants poems to be more vigorous and portray the struggle that black people went through in the past. He wants “poems that kill. Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns. Poem that wrestle cops into alleys and take their weapons leaving them dead…. (Baraka, 31). He is tired of poems not expressing the true meaning of black art and not touching on the specifications of what has happened over some years to the black community. Baraka wants the poems to read from the depth of the soul of his people and not be about love; their needs to be