Symbolism and History in Robert Hayden's Angle of Ascent

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Symbolism and History in Robert Hayden's Angle of Ascent

Abstract

No analysis of Hayden poems can fail to recognize the place that symbolism and history occupies in his poems. In reading the Hayden’s work, an audience quickly deciphers pervasive sense of the past in his work in addition to a powerful nostalgic strain in his poems. To this end, this study explores the symbolism and historical elements in the Hayden’s “Angle of Ascent” poems to understand how Hayden uses these two concepts in his poem collection. Goldstein and Chrisman argue that “Angle of Ascent” by Hayden re-enacts the course of collaboration of his character as both a symbolist and historian. Several researches on the Hayden’s poems show Hayden identification with blackness is a vengeful one, while the symbolism in his poems seems to be an enemy of his typically black and historical muse. Friedlander argues that Hayden poems show an interest in Afro-American history because when he was a young poet, he knew that his history was misrepresented giving him the need to clearly understand his past (Seymour and Hardy 16). Angles of Ascent” focuses on the conventional history of black literature. An extensive collection of modern poetry, it skillfully archives some of the most provocative African-American voices in the American literary, which makes” Angles of Ascent” to take the audience through deep poetic traditions by Africans-American. In literature, symbolism is about using the devices for evoking intricate ideas without applying painstaking explanations that would make a piece of writing look more of an essay than an experience. Thus, the symbolism in poems allows him to reinforce various meanings using symbols such as character, object, action, and contextual setting showing different meanings.

Purpose and significance of study

“Angles of Ascent” appears created to update the conventional history of black literature. The poems focuses on the modern, but...