Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern, and today's

Monday, June 8, 2020. The poem that I'm going to read today is by Robert Hayden,

an American poet, essayist, teacher who lived from 1913 to 1980. And he was the first African-American

writer to hold the office of Poet Laureate, U.S. Poet Laureate,

also known at the time as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress.

He held that role from 1976 to 1978, and being the first African-American writer to hold that role,

to hold that position, he is one of the key figures of 20th century poetry.

One really interesting fact about Hayden is that he actually studied under W.H. Auden.

And I believe you can see Aidan's influence throughout all of his work.

On this podcast, I have previously read Those Winter Sundays,

one of his more famous poems. And as I've been doing in the last few days, I wanted to be sure to

share some of his work while I'm sharing some influential and important work by African-American poets.

So today I'm going to read his poem called Frederick Douglass.

I'm going to read it. I'll read it twice, but I'm going to keep my comments to a minimum

as I've been doing throughout the last several days.

I wanted to share poems that are from great African-American poets

and speak to their experiences.

But I did want to keep my comments to a minimum

to allow these poems to speak for themselves,

given frankly my limited understanding

of what they went through and continue to go through

as black Americans.

...