Langston Hughes Poetry :: essays research papers

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) absorbed America. In doing so, he wrote about many issues critical to his time period, including The Renaissance, The Depression, World War II, the accomplished rights movement, the Black Power movement, Jazz, Blues, and Spirituality. Just as Hughes absorbed America, America absorbed the black poet in just about the only way its mindset onlyowed it to by absorbing a black writer with all of the patronizing self-consciousness that that entails. The contradiction of being both black and American was a great matchless for Hughes. Although this disparity was troublesome, his situation as such granted him an almost begged status due to his place as a black American poet, his work was all the more accessible. Hughes black experience was sensationalized. Using his black experience as a faade, however, Hughes was able to obscure his own torments and insecurities regarding his ambiguous sexuality, his parents and their relationship, and his status as a public f igure.One of Hughes most distinctive styles stemmed from urban nightclubs in which black artists performed for a white audience. Hughes great appreciation for the black urban medical specialty style is obvious end-to-end the various rhythms, patterns, and unpredictable improvisations that mirror the chaotic and pulsating tempo of city life. Jazz and black oral influences, as well as social dichotomy are pervasive elements throughout Hughes poetry. Like nightclub entertainers, Hughes used the progression of Afro-American music (jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, and be-bop) in order to show the reaping and change of a community in conflict, as is shown in Subway Rush Hour. This poem, brimming with sudden and broken rhythms, is characteristic of jazz riffs popular in the 1920s. In Subway Rush Hour, Hughes uses the musicality of his poetry and incorporates it with an important social statement regarding the relation status between blacks and whites. Equality is an ever-present theme throu ghout Hughes poetry. In reputation for English B, Hughes presents us with musical and effective language, an intense social statement, and a very important sense of equality, shocking us into reality.Although Theme for English B was published in 1949, it has many of the characteristics that his earlier works from the Harlem Renaissance possessed. The rhythmic rhyming adds to the musicality of the poem. The language is simple, yet effective in making a very important social statement. An especially intense aura of American separatism is present throughout the poem. A sense of equalitarianism is also present throughout the poem the instructor is just as much student as the student is professor, young and old each view as much to offer the other, and black and white partake of each other.