Lady with a Pen

Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. He acquired his interest in literature mainly from his grandmother, who introduced him to people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and took him to hear Booker T. Washington. As a boy, Langston's favorite book was The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois.

Hughes attended high school at Central High in Cleveland, where he studied and read many works from various black authors, including Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg. After high school, on his way to south to visit his father, Hughes wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which was printed in The Crisis in 1921.

Langston Hughes first entered Harlem attending Columbia University. After only a few weeks in Harlem, the sights, sounds, dance, music, and intellectual life of the people around him inspired Langston in everything he wanted to do with his life. In fact, he eventually quit school to write more. Hughes's poetry absorbed the rhythms of blues and jazz and the dialect of African American speech he heard around him. His works continued to become a big success, especially in The Crisis.

After only one year at Colombia, Hughes decided to leave. He did not want to become a mining engineer, as his father had wished, and felt that he was cheating his father out of money. So he got a job on a ship, and once he realized it wasn=t going anywhere, he left and got another job on a ship sailing for Africa. He didn=t stay there long, having been rejected by the Africans. This incident hurt him deeply, and he said, A[Africa] was the only place in the world where I=ve been called a white man. They looked at my copper-brown skin and straight black hair,...except a little curlyCand they said: >YouCwhite man.=@ He left soon after and went to home to New York. For a few days Hughes enjoyed rare time spent with his family, and then the sea began to call again. He was hired on a freighter making regular runs between New York and Holland. He quit the ship at Rotterdam and fulfilled a wish to see Paris. Desperate for money, he got a job at a nightclub as a busboy, but didn=t like it much because he was expected to break up fights, of which there were many, as it turned out that it mostly served ladies of the night and their patrons, and there was a lot of professional jealousy. Hughes found another job as a waiter, and continued writing poetry. The next spring he met a young lady named Anne(alias Mary) Coussey, and quickly fell in love. But her father, believing that she was considering marriage, cut off her allowance and demanded her return to London. Later that summer, he went on to Italy, where he wrote and published through Alain Locke the renowned AI, Too.@

In November he went home to New York on a ship that allowed him passage as a workaway without pay. When the ship docked, he had twenty-five cents. He took the subway to Harlem.

The Harlem that Hughes loved was an exciting place. During the Renaissance, intellectual dialogue, literary and artistic creation, blues and jazz, dance and musical theater came together and flowered as never before. There were all black musicals, dance clubs, jazz clubs, and night clubs catered to the whites.

The end of the Harlem Renaissance came as a very unpleasant surprise to some, but not to Hughes. "I was there," he would later write of Harlem during the Renaissance. After the end of the Renaissance, Hughes went on to publish dozens of poems, several novels, two volumes of autobiography, and several volumes of nonfiction for young people. Through his simple stories, Hughes revealed his own great sense of humor and proved by example that one reason that black people have survived so long is their ability to

laugh. Langston Hughes had a large impact on the Harlem Renaissance, and many black writers today honor his name with deep respect. He forever established free verse as a major part of poetry. Langston Hughes died in Harlem in 1967.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I=ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody=ll dare

Say to me,

AEat in the kitchen,@

Then.

Besides,

They=ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamedB

I, too, am America.

The Poetry of Langston Hughes

Much of Hughes= poetry is concerned with black poeple and being black. As a black man, he was well aware of the exclusion of his race from the American dream. This poem illustrates his hope of the elimination of Jim Crow laws. Throughout his life, Hughes expressed distaste for these laws, and wouldn=t attend places that had them. For example, never once did he set foot in the renowned Cotton Club. He refused to be put on display for whites, blacks, or any other color. He said, AWe younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn=t matter...If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn=t matter either.@

This poem is of the obvious influence of Walt Whitman, who, unlike Hughes, celebrated the individual rather than a group or race. Hughes greatly admired Whitman, and once wrote his friend Walter White, AI=ve been invited to read my poems a Walt Whitman=s House in Camden on March 1^st. Invitation came from Walt Whitman Foundation, and because I admire his work so much it seems a great honor for me to read my humble poems in the house where he lived and worked....@

Bibliography

1. Caroling Dusk. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927. Countee Cullen.

2. Faith Berry. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. New Jersey: Wing Books, 1992.

3. Raymond Smith, Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989. Harold Bloom.

I wrote this when I was 16. Find out how to write a sestina here and read another one here.

Child of Woe

by Grace

A Tuesday's child followed a mountain

up a strong hill and down the next butterfly.

Her Wednesday sister hears the birds

and her tears begin to fall to the stars.

She is remembering the dear Sunday's flower

that melted last week during Thursday's rain.

Monday's butterfly died in the rain

and the Wednesday sister cries up the mountain.

The Tuesday's child has grown a flower,

and Sunday's angel sees a butterfly.

Can Friday's daughter lift them to the stars

so the poor Wednesday sister hears the birds?

The stars can't hear Tuesday's birds,

So on Wednesday there will come soft rains.

Friday's daughter wants to love the stars,

but can't forgive them for burning her mountain.

So Tuesday's uncle comforts the wee butterfly

and from her tears of healing grows a flower.

But the daughter doesn't believe that the uncle's flower

will stay with her forever. So while the caged bird sings,

The robin outside will love the butterfly.

And even though Tuesday's child never saw the rain,

Softly will tomorrow come to climb her mountain.

Then, freely, we see Orion's belt among the stars.

Yet Wednesday's sister will not see the stars.

And tho' her father brings her many flowers,

all the love in the world cannot move the mountain

of her sorrow, and she no longer hears the birds.

Gently on the roof, the drumming of the rain

lulls us to sleep while we dream of butterflies.

But while we dream, the butterfly

is lightly borne on the wind to the stars.

Even little Wednesday is quiet in the rain

so that Sunday's angel may, too, grow a flower

and see the sun rise while hearing the birds

sing, for it is, after all, Tuesday's mountain.

So up the mountain the butterfly twirls,

while the birds sing out to the stars

and Wednesday's flower blooms in the soft rains.

Lady with a Pen

Pages

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Saturday, February 4, 2012

I Sing the Poet American: Langston Hughes

Monday, December 12, 2011

A Sestina

Monday, December 5, 2011

A Po-em