1804 Hermosa
Nashville 8, Tenn.

May 7, 1947

Dear Langston Hughes:

I hope these poems reach you in time. I have been unable to get down to typing them for you before this date.

I am sending a few things from the book which Doubleday has, I'm sure, about given up hope of ever seeing. 'Middle Passage', the opening poem of *Fire Image* would be good for discussion, I think, but I simply cannot type it out at this time -- it's about twelve pages long -- but if *Cross Section 1945* is in your library, you'll find the poem included.

I'll be interested in knowing what the response to my poems are, of course, and I'm grateful to you for giving my work an evening.

I didn't have a chance to talk with you as I should have liked, when you were here, but it was good to see you again after such a long interval. I wonder if you remember the circumstances under which we first met; I've never forgotten. Elsie Roxborough was presenting your 'Drums of Haiti' at the YWCA in Detroit, and the evening of the first performance you came backstage to meet all of us puhfawmuhs. When Elsie got around to introducing me, I had put on my rig as the Papaloi and had my face painted at least three lurid colors, with feathers and a long cape to boot. I think you looked rather startled when Elsie said, 'This is Bob Hayden.' A *New Yorker* moment, if ever there was one!

Thank you so much for your letter to the Rosenwald Committee; I'm sure that it has been immensely helpful.

More later. I must now descend from Parnassus to give an exam to my Victorian Literature class.

September 30, 1949

Mr. Robert Hayden,
Fisk University,
Nashville 8, Tennessee.

Dear Bob,

The poems are beautiful! I am keeping DOUBLE FEATURE and NOEL NOEL. And returning WALKING THROUGH THE herein.

This will be a Winter issue of VOICES to appear, I imagine, around the holidays, so NOEL NOEL will be very appropriate. And it is a most effective poem. I hope the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE reprints it in their column, and that it gets a wide reading.

I was invited to go to Hampton this fall for a semester of guest teaching, but couldn't make it, with a book and a show on my hands. I read that Jessie Fauset took the post.

Drop by nexttime you are in New York.

Sincerely,

July 30, 1952

Mr. Robert E. Hayden
English Department
Fisk University
Nashville 8, Tennessee

Dear Bob:

For the new German anthology of American Negro
Poetry:

Miss Eva Hesse
bei Koniger
Romerstrasse 6/iii
Munchen 23, Germany

wishes to use a poem of yours from THE POETRY OF THE
NEGRO whose title she does not make clear. She tells
me there is a small payment. I imagine when German
marks are translated into dollars, it won't be much.
But it might speed up matters if you would write her
granting her permission to use your poem, to the
address above, since she has sent the entire listing
of the anthology to me. It looks good, and I think
you'll be happy to be in it. She is, so Germans assure
me, an excellent translator, and highly thought of in
literary circles in the Western Zone. She has
translated a great deal of American poetry for magazines
there.

Lots of good wishes to you, as ever,

April 24, 1955

Mr. Robert Hayden,
Fisk University,
Nashville 8, Tenn.

Dear Bob,

I am enlarging into a magazine piece a chapter on Bessie Smith which I did for my autumn Dodd, Mead juvenile, FAMOUS NEGRO MUSIC MAKERS. In the magazine article (not the book) I would like very much to quote your entire poem, HOMAGE TO THE EMPRESS OF THE BLUES (which I think is a very beautiful poem) crediting it to you, of course, and paying you 10% of whatever I receive for the article, should it be sold. If you will grant me this permission (or whatever your decision is) kindly drop me a line soon.

Now I'm hard at work on the second volume of my autobiography, but can't get half of my life into it, so guess there'll have to be a third later. I must have a memory like an elephant!

Best regards to you, as ever,

1804 Hermosa Street
Nashville 8, Tenn.

May 29, 1955

Dear Langston,

By now, you must have wondered...or given up the idea of using the poem. But, as usual, I am at war with myself and with my poetry, and letters have just been beyond my power to cope with. Neurosis is all.

By all means, use "The Empress" if you still want to and thanks for asking. I am enclosing a final revision I made, and I like it better than the one you know. But use whichever suits you more.

I have been in the throes of getting out another pamphlet of my poems -- new ones, for the most part, written on the Ford Foundation grant I received last April. I seem doomed to be a pamphlet poet, a periphery poet, for publishers continue to turn down my ms. *Ballad of Remembrance*, always with praise of course.

I spent five months of last year in Mexico and love the country so much I want to go back there to live. I shall return there in a few days to spend the summer. I met Willard Motley in Cuernavaca, where he is comfortably intrenched and at work on something with a Mexican setting.

Arna showed me a copy of the article on Bessie Smith and Mahalia Jackson, and I liked it very much. The episode of Mahalia's singing for the sick woman I found moving and suggestive. There is much wonderful material in the lives of

1804 Hermosa Street
Nashville 3, Tenn.

March 1, 1958

Dear Langston,

First of all -- many, many congratulations on the success of your play. I hope it runs and runs -- maybe if it runs long enough even I will get a chance to see it. One would think that New York was as far away as Mozambique, for I seem never to get there any more. However.... And the news that Braziller will bring out a Langston Hughes Reader is good too, and I am looking forward to it. Even though I rarely ever write to you, Arna and I speak of you often whenever we can pierce the academic sound barrier. (How long, O Lord, how long?)

I have just gotten a letter off to Dodd, Mead granting permission for the use of the "Empress." As you will remember, I revised this poem and sent you a copy of the revision at the time when you were considering an article on Bessie Smith and Mahalia Jackson, (who by the way sometimes turns my blood to ice and fire) and this is the version that I want published. In case you can't put your hands on it right away, I'm enclosing another copy. I do hope the new anthology will go; from what Arna told me about it, it should be really corking. And high time we had a new collection of folklore too.

I certainly do not mean to sing a song of woe, but I have really been discouraged these past two or three years. University life is getting increasingly unbearable to me yet I can't get out of it. I find that I have less and less time for poetry, even though I have almost become a recluse, and academic chores leave me stranded and stultified creatively. But enough of that. But I am casting about for another job, and so when Arna passed on to me the letter Kay Boyle wrote to you I answered it and told her I was interested in applying for the position. She may get in touch with you, as I told her that you knew me, etc. I have not the slightest knowledge of what the Thomas School is like but plunged in away, feeling that if the institution could attract a person of Kay Boyle's standing then it must have possibilities. We shall see.

And before I close, I want to say that the poems of yours in Rolfe Humphries' anthology are among the best you've written. I was much taken with them, and honestly they seemed better than almost anything else in the collection, because they were about something - not merely a display of technique. Poetry is becoming so damned arty these days - slick poems about fountains and statues. Too much Richard Wilbur elegance and not enough of the old-time guttiness. I see this more clearly now that I have gotten past my own arty-elegant period of a few years back.

Best wishes to you and good luck on all your various and sundry projects (which continue to amaze me!)

P.S. I've dropped my middle initial - publish under Robert Hayden (the E. seems pretentious somehow.)

March 5, 1958

Dear Bob!

It was certainly a pleasant surprise to receive your long and interesting letter. I'm glad you granted Dodd-Mead permission to use your "Empress" in our folklore book. You apparently forget to enclose the copy as you said in the letter. Would you send me the revised version so we can be sure to have the version you prefer published.

The school where Kay Boyle teaches is quite a small institution which ranges, I believe, from kindergarten thru prep school. I visited there but since it was on a Sunday I didn't get a chance to see it in operation. I found the village the surrounding New England area quite charming. At least it would be a pretty place to teach.

You speak of the difficulties of the academic milieu but I could tell you about writing for a *living*. It makes nothing but a literary share-cropper out of a man so I would be willing to swap my typewriter for your chair and just lean back and lecture to students for a while. In fact I would be perfectly willing to let them relax and sleep while I lectured.

It just may be that I will be coming to Fisk for the Spring Festival since Arna tells me the Committee is considering writing me. If so it will be good to see you again. I told Arna to tell the Committee that, as an extra added attraction, I would be willing to repeat for the students my Village Vanguard performance of poetry against jazz - if there's a campus jazz band to provide the background. Besides my current performances at the Vanguard, I am booked for two similar ones on the Coast and there will be another with Coleman Hawkins and Red Allen at the Stratford Festival in Canada this summer. At Fisk I will do it for free just for fun in addition to my regular poetry program - if it is scheduled.

Until then, and with all best wishes to you, as ever