Through his poems, particularly “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Dream Boogie,” Langston Hughes was attempting to communicate the truth about blackness. He was not interested in activism, but simply wished to convey art of, by, and for black people. His poems did not have to follow a particular rhyme, or meter, but simply communicate the sound of black people, in order to prove that it could be beautiful art, and that he was not ashamed of his blackness. While “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” did, in fact, challenge the notion that existed in the 1920’s that African Americans were lower on the evolutionary scale than other humans, the poems that Hughes wrote afterwards made it clear that activism was not his goal, due to his focus on the “low down folk.” Hughes was not interested in the uplift of black people, but instead wished to call attention to their beauty. His focus on blues music asserted his opinion that everything about the blues is a subject of art, while the architects of the Harlem Renaissance were trying to avoid perpetuating were being played in underground clubs surrounded by a supposed drug culture.the image of black people being a part of that “low culture,” including the blues, which were being played in underground clubs surrounded by a supposed drug culture.
In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes’ voice becomes a collective “I,” emblematic of all African Americans. He places black people far back into the beginnings of ancient civilization, giving them a prominent role, as much as any other people. He highlights their ancientness, wisdom, and resilience with his allusions to the building of the Egyptian Empire and the charged diction while speaking of his soul, which “has grown deep like the rivers” (4, 12). His use of repetition with this particular line adds emphasis to the concept of black people having wise and beautiful souls, and that they are as much connected to the Earth and to the history of the human population as any other people. The repetition of that collective “I:” “I bathed” (5), “I built” (6), “I looked” (7), “I heard” (8), joins together a string of impossible feats for one man to accomplish, further emphasizing that the “I” is representative of all African Americans throughout history.
While the architects of the Harlem Renaissance adored “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” they frowned upon poems such as “Dream Boogie” for perpetuating the “low culture” that blacks were a part of. Hughes uses improper grammar such as “Ain’t you heard” (2, 11), and “Y-e-a-h!” (21) in order to capture the true sounds of black people and the rhythm of their blues music. Like a blues song, “Dream Boogie” tends to sway in and out, swing back and forth, both physically on the page and audibly. In the second-to-last stanza, the quick, short end rhymes seem to mirror beats on a drum or cymbal, with swift exclamatory punctuation. There appears to be no firm structure to the poem at all, further reiterating his goal of simply communicating the sounds of black people, without maintaining some agenda of social uplift.
I very much agree with how you interpreted Langston Hughes’s poetry, but I would have to disagree with the statement that he was not bringing social uplift to African Americans. It seems to me that Hughes was writing for and about his race, not trying to please or appease any other race and in that alone I believe it proves that he was in fact uplifting black people. Although he was using improper grammar (which could be an example of “low culture”) in Dream Boogie, and as he does in a few of his other poems, he was still showing the world exactly what the black people of his time and culture were talking about. He was not trying to make his race sound or seem any better or worse than what they truly were, rather he was doing his race a justice by shining the light on everything that they were. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Hughes was showing his depth of proudness for his race, without comparing them to another race. This seems to me that he was in fact interested in activism, in the sense that he wanted to show the world who his people were.
I agree that there is an activism here–activism through art. Hughes was a great promoter of his fellow artists, and, as we will see in class today, to carve out a voice in this way resisted the forms of representation that had hemmed in African Americans for so long. I also think, Sarah, that you do a great job of articulating the shifting syncopations of Hughes’s blues poems–while they have no “firm structure,” they have a fine sense of patterning, repetition, echo, rhythm, etc.
Also, Sarah, is is important to cite authors / ideas here. For example, when you bring up the resistance some African American critics had to the portrayal of blues culture, it’s important to know where you’re getting that info (from the Ramazani headnote, or elsewhere).