The sixth American poet to be featured on FRIDAY’S POETRY CORNER, is James Mercer Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes (as he is better known) was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes’ parents were of mixed-race; both his father's grandmothers were African American, and both his father's grandfathers were white: one of Scottish and one of Jewish descent.
Like Walt Whitman (whom Hughes admired), our sixth poet called many places “home.” Unlike Whitman, however, Hughes did not have the benefit of a stable family life to provide a sense of emotional security. Hughes’ parents divorced when he was a small child. After the divorce, Hughes’ father went to Cuba, and then Mexico, seeking to escape the racism he found in the United States. After his parents’ divorce, Hughes was raised mainly by his maternal grandmother Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary instilled in the young Hughes a lasting sense of racial pride.
After his grandmother died, Hughes went to live with family friends. Because of the unstable early life, his childhood was not an entirely happy one. These unhappy, early experiences heavily influenced the poet that Hughes would eventually become. It is nowhere written in stone that an unhappy childhood is a requisite for artistic development. In Hughes’ case, however, his unhappy childhood endowed him with a rich fantasy life that he used to escape his surroundings. It was during these early, lonely years that Hughes discovered the redeeming power of books. The melancholy (what we call “the blues”) that we see in Hughes’ best work was seeded back in those early days.
Eventually Hughes went to live with his mother, who had by now remarried. They lived in Lincoln, Illinois and eventually in Cleveland, Ohio, where Hughes attended high school.
While in elementary school Hughes was elected Class Poet. Hughes once wrote that the reason he was named Class Poet was because of the stereotype that African Americans have rhythm. "I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows — except us — that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet."
During high school in Cleveland, Ohio, Hughes wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began to write his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "'When Sue Wears Red", was written while he was still in high school. Following his high school graduation, Hughes spent a year in Mexico with his father and a year at Columbia University (which his father paid for in the hopes that Hughes would study to become an engineer). During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's 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 medal for literature.
Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the 1920s through the 1960s. Hughes was a prolific writer; 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 1920s. 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.
Despite his generosity of spirit and likeable disposition (he had an extraordinary gift for laughter) Hughes never formed close personal ties with anyone. Behind the warm smile, there was an impenetrable wall that no one could surmount. It is as if the experiences from his troubled childhood made him overly cautious of people in order to avoid further pain.
Hughes was a prolific writer, but he never achieved financial success. He had to keep on working until the very end. Hughes died on May 22, 1967, at the age of sixty-five. He left instructions for his mourners to all wear red. At his memorial service, a pianist played a Hughes’ favorite song – “Do Nothin’ till You Hear from Me” by the famous Duke Ellington.
Hughes was often referred as America’s Black Poet Laureate (a title that he probably gave himself). It would be wrong, however, to see Hughes as merely a Black (or Negro as the term was used back in his day) poet. If we look at Hughes only through the eyes of the Black American experience, we deny the enormous humanity of his writings. Take for example his poem “Harlem” (often mistakenly referred to by its first line, “A Dream Deferred.”)
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Deferring one’s dreams, until they fester and explode is not a uniquely black experience. The man who gives up his dream to play professional sports in order to support his family; the woman who gives up her dream of going to college so she can stay home for her family are just two examples of dreams deferred that can one day explode. These are not necessarily black dreams or white dreams or brown or yellow dreams - they are people dreams.
Other Hughes’ poems equally apply to people of all races. For example, the poem “Madam to Madam” is written from the point of view of the house maid (who is presumably black). The point made by the poem, that the employer can treat the maid in a cruel and abusive manner while still professing to love her, is something that thousands of Latina domestic workers in the USA could easily identify with and undrstand.
Madam to Madam
I worked for a woman,
She wasn't mean--
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.
Had to get breakfast,
Dinner, and supper, too--
Then take care of her children
When I got through.
Wash, iron, and scrub,
Walk the dog around--
It was too much,
Nearly broke me down.
I said, Madam,
Can it be
You trying to make a
Pack-horse out of me?
She opened her mouth.
She cried, Oh, no!
You know, Alberta,
I love you so!
I said, Madam,
That may be true--
But I'll be dogged
If I love you!
Two other poems, “I, too sing America” and “Democracy” speak to Black Americans who feel as though they have been excluded from the American Dream. “I, too sing America,” addresses the idea that Black Americans have been excluded from the American Dream – they are forced to eat in the kitchen while others feast in the dining room. Although the recent election of Barack Obama has gone a long way to making that dream a reality, there are still miles to go. Those feelings of being excluded and “not belonging” are feelings shared by countless other American, not just Blacks. Gays and lesbians, the homeless, the recently unemployed, they all too feel as if they have been left out of the American Dream and are being “sent to the kitchen.”
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,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
In “Democracy,” Hughes tells the reader that people are tired of waiting for “democracy” to be handed to them. They want democracy and freedom and they want it now. Again, this is not just a Black issue, this is a universally felt emotion. During the recent debates over “Prop. 8” (the measure approved by California voters prohibiting same-sex marriages) gays and lesbians were often told “to wait” that their turn would “eventually come.” But, gays and lesbians rightfully responded, should they have to wait for “equality” to be handed to them at some later time in the future? The feelings expressed by Hughes in “Democracy” are as applicable to Black causes as they are to Gay-Lesbian causes.
Democracy
Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.
I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.
Of course, not all of Hughes’ poetry was “serious.” Some of his poems, especially the short ones, address everyday concerns. In “Ennui” Hughes writes something that most of us already know too well, that being poor “sucks.”
Ennui
It's such a
Bore
Being always
Poor.
Hughes also played with haiku-like poetry, as in “Suicide’s Note” where Hughes uses the three-line format common to haiku.
Suicide’s note
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
The last two poems that I will share with you are among my favorite poems. In “The Cross” some of us will identify with the ambivalence towards “mixed” blood that Hughes describes in the poem. If you come from “mixed blood” (and in the USA that is most of us) you will sometimes feel as if your feet are firmly (and sometimes not so firmly) in two separate worlds. For me, these worlds sometimes tug and pull me in opposite directions – I don’t know where I might eventually end.
Cross
My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?
The poem “Still here” has been a constant source of inspiration for me since I first read it in a high school class. Through the ups and downs of life, through the valleys that I have crossed, the mountains that I’ve climbed and the travails that I have faced, I too am still here – loving and laughing and living. I am a survivor!
Still here
Been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,
Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'--
But I don't care!
I'm still here!
I hope that you have enjoyed this selection of poems by America’s Black Poet Laureate.
I plan to continue the FRIDAY POETRY CORNER but I now intend to shift the focus away from American poets to European and Latin American poets. We will revisit Cuba’s poet and freedom fighter Jose Marti. SanPaul already wrote a post for Marti’s birthday; this time, however, I will focus on the poetry and other writings of this extraordinary man who paid for Cuba’s freedom from Spain with his own blood.
Stay tuned…enjoy…have a wonderful weekend. (This is Bike Month in the USA. If you live in the USA, get off your chair and go ride a bike. If you are in some other country, get off your chair and also go ride a bike.)
