Frederick Douglass

“Frederick Douglass” loosely follows the sonnet form. It is 14 lines, and it abides by the conventions of a Petrarchan sonnet in that it provides a six-line section, known as the sestet, and an eight-line section, known as the octave. White readers of The Atlantic would see the poem initially as a conventional sonnet by a Black American poet who, in an era just beginning to register Black pride and outrage, cooperated with the status quo and abided by the rules of poetry imposed by centuries of white poets.

Hayden’s first deviation from the Petrarchan sonnet form is when he upends the convention in which the opening octave presents a problem (typically grief over a departed or dead lover) and the closing sestet offers a solution, a way out of the emotional dilemma. By reversing that expectation—the opening is the sestet, and it provides a glorious vision; the poem closes with the octave that reminds the reader of the status quo—the poem indicates that, when it comes to race in America, there is no easy fix. At least for now, the problem is bigger than the solution.

In addition, the poem violates the expectation of a tight rhyme scheme. This sonnet is set in free verse. What better way to argue the necessity of freedom for African Americans than to allow the verse itself to assert its own sense of language, to privilege its own form. Typical of Hayden, though, the poem never becomes the free-floating “yawping” typical of open verse. If open verse terrifies because it is loud and defiant, free verse terrifies quietly, subtly. The poem looks like a sonnet, scans like a sonnet, and yet is not a sonnet. It is something new, a fusion of tradition and individuality, of expectations and creativity, a metaphor suggesting Hayden’s perception of the position of Black Americans themselves, a part of a white American culture and yet apart.