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Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden Quotes

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Famous Robert Hayden Quotes

“Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?”

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Book:Collected Poems
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“here among them the americans this baffling multi people extremes and variegations their noise restlessness their almost frightening energy how best describe these aliens in my reports to The Counselors disguise myself in order to study them unobserved adapting their varied pigmentations white black red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering distinctions by which they live by which they justify their cruelties to one another charming savages enlightened primitives brash new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how describe them do they indeed know what or who they are do not seem to yet no other beings in the universe make more extravagant claims for their importance and identity”

PoetryCultureCommunityRacePoemRacismRace RelationsAmericans
Book:Collected Poems
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