Today, the day before Candlemas and the birth of spring, is the day Langston Hughes was born.
According to an interview broadcast this morning on NPR, he was named Class Poet of his eighth grade class in Cleveland because the teacher told the students that poetry needed rhythm, and, as a black kid, the other kids decided he had to have rhythm. It turned out to suit him.
At a time when some people were regarded as second-class citizens (or even not quite human) because of the color of their skin, he wrote: "We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."
From his birthplace in Joplin, Missouri, he moved to Illinois, then Ohio, then to Columbia University, where he quit the engineering school with a B+ average after a year because poetry was more important. In the early 1920s, he traveled by freighter through most of Central Africa, as well as to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. He hung out in jazz clubs (barely legal institutions at that time) in Washington DC and Harlem. And everywhere he went, he learned. And wrote it down.
By the time of his death, Hughes had written sixteen books of poems, two novels, three short story collections, four works of "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, several musicals, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts, stacks of magazine articles, and edited seven anthologies.
His knack was in layering history and emotion into simple, offhand phrases. If haiku is a distillation of poetic image, Hughes' best poetry is a condensation, like dew on a windshield or sweet milk stirred into strong coffee.
Dream Variations
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me--
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
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The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
(Hear the poet read this in RealAudio here.)
Dinner Guest: Me
I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To Probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A.--
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."
The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.