I for one, am a huge fan of Jazz poetry. Therefore you can only imagine how estatic I am when I see Langston Hughes on the syllabus...
One of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that the experiences of negro culture. The oppression and subpression towards African Americans during the Great Migration is most evident in Hughes poem Harlem and The Negro Speaks of Rivers.
What I love about Hughes is not only his academic achievements (He went to Columbia which for a minority, that's very impressive.) But what is even more impressive is his quality of empathy:
I am a Negro:
Black as night is black,
Black like the depths of my Africa.
Black as night is black,
Black like the depths of my Africa.
Hughes is no like some others who disregards his ancestry. He empathies with his heritage, speaks for them, and celebrates them. He might not take action as radically as MLK, but his "explosion" of frustration, certainly does not wait...
That's fun that your a fan of Hughes, I'm sure you had no problem writting a response for one of his poems. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Harlem" are both very powerful poems; you can really get a sense of Hughes connection to his ancestry and people. You called it empathy, an empathy towards his people who were opressed and had their identities stolen from them. I read that Langston Hughes received a lot of ridicule for his poems from other black intellectuals of the time because they beileved he was portraying black people in a poor light but Hughes was doing no such thing. He understood his roots and the circumstances of his ancestry; he felt "empathy" towards his decendents and his race. Langston Hughes showed courage and strength for his expressing his views publicly and I can understand why your a fan of his.
ReplyDeleteHey! I actually did wrote a response to "Harlem" before writing the blog post. In fact most of them were really after-the-fact posts haha. Well I do have to say I might not necessarily be a fan of Hughes, just the genre of Jazz poetry. I appreciate the combination of rhythm to words =).
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