Poet for the Week-Langston Hughes

This week I am going to feature Mr. Langston Hughes. This is in honor of National Poetry Month.

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husand, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and traveled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November of 1924, he moved to Washington, DC. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold metal for literature.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred. His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. Unlike other notable black poets of the period-Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Hughes died of complications from prostrate cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place."

In the Crisis magazine of 2002 January/February, Langston Hughes is featured. The Times and Life of Langston Hughes is so very interesting. Here are a few comments from some noted persons:

Julian Bond says: "I first met Lanston Hughes when he visited my college on one of the many speaking tours he made when poetry wouldn't support him. He was like his poetry: sly, humorous, deeply connected to his roots and race, kind and thoughtful, a fierce enemy of injustice and a keen observer of his time and place and fellow human beings. He-and his poetry-are very much alive today.'

Tricia Rose, Professor of American Studies, NYU says: "Langston Hughes is especially important because many of his works serve as a bridge between what many perceive as a value-laden separation between folk and 'serious' literature and poetry. Hughes took the voices of everyday folk quite seriously; he saw the literary soul in everyday life. It is precisely this inclusive, collective spirit that attracts young writers and readers today."

E. Ethelbert Miller, Humanities Council of Washington DC-"Langston Hughes looked into the mirror of hs race and fell in love with what he saw. Hughes was witness to the Great Migration of African Americans moving from the south up into the urban north. His work documents our history, humor, blues and good times. He is our dreamkeeper; a man who used every genre to celebrate Blackness. I've known writers-Langston Hughes in number one."

Houston A. Baker, Jr. Professor of English, Duke University says: "Langston Hughes was the first truly global Afro American poet. His work influenced writers from Cuba to Senegal, from South America to the Soviet Union. He moved through an array of literary and cultural genres with the spare economy of naural genius. His work-and, more imporantly, his almost missionary commitment to the souls of Black Folk-should be much better known to the present generation."

Hughes celebrated the human condition. check these lines out.

"Life Is Fine"

So since I'm still livin
I guess I will live on
I could've died for love
But for livin I was born
Though you may hear me holler
Or you may hear me cry
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you're gonna see me die.

Poem (Youth)

We have tomorrow
Bright before us
Like a flame.

Yesterday
A night-gone thing
A sun-down name.

And dawn today
Broad arch above the road we came.

We march!

Langston Hughes

next week, Maya Angelou!!!