Robert Hayden, the twentieth century poet, wrote poems that many times used history and form that allowed him to craft narratives that had different voices. He used historic themes in many of his poems to show the shared heritage of the African Americans. He also used form to get his message across, invoking a sense of speed, ideas, or to use different voices to focus the poem through. His poems Night, Death, Mississippi, and Runagate, …showed first 75 words of 909 total…

…showed last 75 words of 909 total…stays with the theme of the running and moving late at night, the fear that comes with it. The poems of Robert Hayden uses historic events to craft and make many of his poems the classics they are. Using various forms of poetry and often using more then one voice with in the poem, he manages to write poems that keep the readers attention while relating events that are a shared history of all Americans.