Summertime and the Living . . . (1962). Detailed description

Robert Hayden crafts this poem in contrast to the well-known song from the musical Porgy and Bess. In the original, the phrase is “Summertime and the living is easy.” It is a song that offers up a vision of black life, even for poor blacks, that is a romantic illusion, full of good food, love, laughter—all to be had for the asking. In the course of the musical (and the DuBose Heyward book on which the musical is based), bad things do happen, love is thwarted, and “living” is seen to be more complicated than the song allows. The version of poor black life offered from an outsider’s perspective misses some critical observations. Hayden’s poem is a corrective.

Hayden first published this poem in one of his “apprentice works,” Figure of Time. Looking at the changes he made, changing the line breaks, the stanza breaks, and a word here or there, provides insight into his effort as craftsman. For example, in the original:

Nobody planted roses, he recalls, but sunflowers gangled there sometimes, tough-stalked and bold and like the vivid children there unplanned.

There circus-poster horses curveted in trees-of-heaven above the quarrels and shattered glass and he was daredevil rider of them all.

As it exists in the more widely distributed later version, these two verses are one verse; he changes daredevil to bareback. But notice the difference the changes in line breaks make:

Nobody planted roses, he recalls,
but sunflowers gangled there sometimes,
tough-stalked and bold
And like the vivid children there unplanned.
There circus-poster horses curveted in trees of heaven
above the quarrels and shattered glass, and he was bareback rider of them all.

The flower imagery—the roses and the sunflowers—provides symbols of economic status. The roses are equated with “dearness” both economic and emotional—requiring the luxuries of time and resources to plant and nurture them. Thus they are available to community members only in death:

No roses there in summer—
Oh, never roses except when people died—

The sunflowers, on the other hand, grew unbidden, unplanned, like the children who grew there— “tough-stalked and bold.” Hayden has employed this symbol in other poems, notably in “Sunflowers, Beaubien Street,” from his first publication, Heart- shape in the Dust. Again, the distinctive qualities include the ability to grow and even prosper in unlikely soil, uncultivated—yet be both beautiful and strong if not highly valued.

In fact, a major theme of this poem is the undervaluing of the lives of the occupants of this community. If the children grow and develop largely unattended, it is because the difficulties of living have so stripped the adults, both emotionally and physically.

no vacations for his elders,
so harshened after each unrelenting day
that they were shouting-angry.

Yet the members of this community retain their dreams, embodied in Jack Johnson and his diamond limousine and in their “fantasies of Ethiopia spreading her gorgeous wings.”

For Discussion or Writing
1. This poem recalls the summertimes of Hayden’s childhood. What is the tone of those recollections—happy? sad? angry? bewildered? amused? Or some other set of emotions? Or some mix of emotions? What are the details that support your evaluation?

2. This poem uses the title of a famous song from the opera Porgy and Bess. Find out about the opera and find the lyrics to the song “Summertime” itself. Compare and contrast Hayden’s “Summertime” to the one in the song.