The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Langston Hughes

15210828.JPGDaily Book Excerpt: Poetry

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2: Contemporary Poetry, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair

Hughes is one of the most American of poets. There were other poets of the Harlem Renaissance, and it was a diverse group, despite the fact that they were part of a movement. There were other black poets who looked to Europe for their poetic forms, to the old white masters. There were artists who were really part of the modernist tradition, wrapping themselves in the existing culture (by that I mean FORM), and yet wrote the experience of black America at that time. Langston Hughes was not one of those poets. His inspiration was strictly local. He looked to black music at that time, the blues, jazz, Negro spirituals – homegrown American forms – instead of trying to write in “white” forms. There were others like him. Melvin Tolson (although you would never mistake a Tolson poem for a Hughes poem), who wrote long rollicking story-poems, full of characters and voices. Tolson was more like Carl Sandburg (although Hughes counted Sandburg as a huge influence). Hughes’ poems are simpler, more to the point. And, like a lot of this stuff, it’s political.

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Michael Schmidt in Lives of the Poets writes:

During the Harlem Renaissance, which centered on the vital musical culture, the novelists wrote some powerful, though conventional novels that included dialogue, but the narrative was generally in a standard form. What Langston Hughes set out to do was to use the cadences, the natural metaphors and dialect elements as the primary material for his verse and for his famous Jesse B. Semple letters. “Speak that I may see thee,” said Ben Jonson. In Hughes’s work a whole community is made visible.

Hughes wrote, about his influences:

The Blues always impressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter … of a sadness where there is no god to appeal to.

It may seem like a done deal now, that Hughes would rise to the top of that group of poets, and be anthologized still today, but it was not at all clear at the time. He got a lot of flak, mainly from the rising black middle-class at that time, who wanted nothing to do with black forms, black influences. They thought it lacked dignity, held them back. One middle-class black newspaper referred to Hughes as a “sewer dweller”. I can’t say I blame anyone involved. It’s easy to sit in the present day and judge those for not having the foresight to recognize that it ALL is America (“I, too, am America”, said Hughes) – but it certainly wasn’t clear in real-time. Dangerous days. Other black poets of the same generation criticized Hughes for his rhythms, his “black” sounding poems. They wanted to advance in life, and they thought that Hughes represented a step backward. On the whole, it was white writers who supported Hughes, financially and otherwise, championing him, publishing him in “their” magazines. This was also a strike against him in certain black quarters, especially later in the century, the 50s and 60s, as “black power” was rising. Hughes had the whole “house Negro” insult thrown at him repeatedly. He couldn’t win, if you look at it one way – and yet, who’s the last man standing??

Hughes kept doing what he wanted to do, and in his way, made the space larger for other voices. His work said: “This is poetry too. This language can be included in poetry.”

A very well-read man, he moved to New York in 1921 to attend Columbia. He went there for a year, then moved to Paris in 1924. He returned a couple of years later, and by that point, he was starting to get published. He wrote all kinds of things – novels, political writing – and in 1926 he published an essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, which became “a manifesto for the Harlem Renaissance” (according to Norton). In it, he called for black artists to stop denying their race. They could create a literature out of their own home-grown forms. This message was not immediately embraced, but it was a hugely influential essay, and an important document in the history of 20th century American cultural life.

Langston Hughes was the first black poet to make his living from poetry. What an amazing advancement. It was not easy for him. He experienced racism and prejudice of the most vicious kind. As a child, he witnessed lynchings (par for the course at the time; many poets, white and black, wrote stories of what they saw, as children, and it’s harrowing stuff).

His reputation has just grown. He influenced a generation of poets. The roots of his poetry was in black American music, not white European literature, and I would say, knowing that about him, you really can’t even measure his influence. He is everywhere. He is definitive.

Michael Schmidt again:

Time has moved on, and Hughes’s poems of protest, while they are still resonant, belong, as much protest poetry does, primarily to their moment in history. What makes them durable is their voice.

This is one of his later poems, late 40s, early 50s, and I really love it:

THEME FOR ENGLISH B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

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5 Responses to The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Langston Hughes

  1. Bruce Reid says:

    I love how the instructor’s assignment is a dully metronomic bit of doggerel, its rhythmic simplicity exploded no less than its pieties by the winding, conversational beats of the response. How lines and sentences, as the words snake around and snap off, lose the sense of borders and become as interpenetrable as cultural landmarks or skin tones. (My favorite bit, just to hear and hum along with, is the set of directions from school to apartment.)

    A sincere question: “somewhat more free.” Devastating understatement, or nod to the instructor’s own limits of understanding?

  2. red says:

    Bruce – I very much like your observation about the simplicity of the instructor’s part of the poem – Seen from Hughes’ standpoint, it is ridiculous – How can I explain to you how life is for me, sir??

    And I think my favorite part of the poem is the word “somewhat” in that second to last line. To me, that is classic Hughes, and why some others don’t find him radical ENOUGH. But he was a humanist. Nobody is TOTALLY free, even a man of the dominant group of the culture – the instructor may be a white male, and enjoy privileges merely because of that – but he’s not totally free – none of us are. All of us are imprisoned by something. The fact that Hughes is able to recognize that … I find it really moving.

  3. Desirae says:

    Langston Hughes seems like he had such incredible confidence as an artist. I have no idea how he may have struggled personally, but his poems are so upfront and unapologetic. He wrote what he wanted to write. He was also talented at such a young age. I would never read something like “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and guess that it was written by a man not yet twenty!

  4. Pingback: The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Countee Cullen | The Sheila Variations

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