S3E6 Blood, Sweat & Song: Langston Hughes in Four Poems
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Joe: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. I'm Joe, and I'm here with my co-host Maiya, and we have a brilliant episode for you. Today we're gonna be discussing the poetry of the renowned early 20th century poet Langston Hughes, a real favorite of mine and Maiya, so I'm sure we're gonna have a great conversation.

We're gonna be touching on a number of themes in this episode, including the lyric voice writing the Harlem Renaissance and reclaiming the past. But Maiya, before we get into this incredible body of work, can you tell us a little bit more about Hughes himself and any key dates that we need to be aware of?

Maiya: I would love to, what I think is really useful here is to actually just run through a timeline, from birth to death, because he was producing work at a rapid rate and all of the poems that we're gonna talk about today come from various collections of his. So Hughes was born in 1901 [00:01:00] in Missouri. His lifespan, you know, 60 plus years. So we're talking about a period of rapid change. He saw World War I, World War II, these huge monumental events, and also lived through the Harlem Renaissance, which is something we are going to touch on very heavily today.

It's something that is absolutely impactful on his work and vice versa He was one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was kind of around the 1920s, 1930s, if we're looking at a key date for that. but his first poem was published in 1921.

It's called The Negro Speaks of Rivers, its poem that we'll touch on today. he also attended Columbia, but left due to the racism he was facing, after which he traveled through Africa, he traveled through Europe. He lived briefly in Paris, and then 1926, his first collection, The Weary Blues came out. Now a lot of Hughes’s poetry kind of has this slightly musical focus. We'll talk about jazz, poetry, the blues impact, and I don't doubt for a second, this episode is going to be rich with kind of [00:02:00] musical and literary allusions. So again, to track back to date from 1926 onwards, he was kind of rapidly producing work.

As I said, 1927, another collection came out called Fine Clothes to the Jew, in 1930, his novel, Not Without Laughter came out he had a very varied kind of interest across, you know, worldwide politics. He briefly went to the Soviet Union, went under the impression that he was a socialist, if not a communist.

and in 1959, his selected poems collection came out, which was really a, summary of all of his best work. and All of the poems we are talking about today are also in that collection. So we are talking about oldies and goldies. I would say he died in 1967, so his work found a really wide timeline, and actually the poems we're talking about today are at various points in that timeline. So I'm really excited to talk to you, Joe, about how that kind of changes as we move through time with him. But where would you like to start? 

Joe: I think I'd like to [00:03:00] start with The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which as you mentioned was written in 1920. So just a little bit of context setting here. This is right at the early stages of the Harlem Renaissance, which as Maiya mentioned, is a movement.

We're gonna talk about this incredible collection of African American writers, musicians, artists, largely as the name suggests, in Harlem, New York. And a lot of the shared identity of that work is about redefining the black experience, challenging negative stereotypes, and. We have to look a little bit further back and a little bit further forward to really understand why that moment in time is so important because this is happening, during a historical phenomenon, really known as the great migration in which 6 million African Americans moved from, predominantly rural areas in the southwest of America to urban areas in the northeast, largely for economic reasons and to avoid an escape discrimination.

Now, 6 million [00:04:00] people, as I mentioned, moved between about 1910 to about 1970. So. Langston Hughes is writing about 10 years into this great migration. So huge social, cultural change is occurring and it's happening day by day, week by week, month by month, new families are arriving. that changes the demographic.

It changes the economic prosperity of the area. It changes the nature of the country itself. America was changing almost before people's eyes. And over the course of what two generations, you have migration that is enormous in scale. I mean, Maiya and I are both from the UK we're talking about almost 10% of the British population moving, across an area, you know, probably larger than the distance from the UK to Spain.

I mean, it's a huge, huge shift. And that's the context in which this poem is written. And as I mentioned, we're starting off with this. Oh, it's a wonderful, wonderful poem. The Negro Speaks of Rivers. So Maiya, having set the scene for that poem slightly, I'm gonna give you the first bite of the cherry. Where would you like to look at in [00:05:00] this poem?

And can you explain to listeners a little bit about what the poem is ostensibly about?

Maiya: I would love to, and as I'm sure many of our regular listeners will know, I love to focus on a title. I think the title of this poem absolutely sets the scene for what we're gonna talk about. Of course, the title, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, gives you an indication that what we're going to be talking about here is of course water.

We're going to be talking about bodies of water. We're going to be talking about rivers. But what we're actually talking about here is how the black population in America, the African American population, have this wonderful link historically to a variety of rivers. Even though we use a first person voice in this poem, you have the lyric eye is so powerful here. There is a real sense that there is a collective history being kind of wrought right before our eyes. There is references to the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile. these bodies of water that carry absolute [00:06:00] histories with them. And the fact that, you know, the African American speaker becomes also a conduit of those histories as well. Aligning themselves with those rivers is one of the most beautiful things I've read in a very long time. and as I say, I want to focus on that title. I really want to unpick what this title actually represents because There is a claim being made in this title.

There is An absolute stake that the speaker has in what they are talking about. The Negro Speaks of Rivers is our speaker telling us that they have the absolute authority to speak on those topics. Now, as Joe so aptly put it, the Harlem Renaissance was really about reworking African American histories , the wider American context of facing, the worst discrimination, racism, you know, absolute violence. And yet what we have here is a claim to authority that is absolutely singular. This is not a claim that can be taken or destroyed [00:07:00] by anyone else. It is one voice. It is the lyric that is so powerful. 

Joe: again, for any, listeners who might be confused as to why we're not reading these poems in their entirety, that's because not all of Langston Hughes's work is out of copyright. So I do really encourage you, a lot of these poems are available, online to go and find it.

Of course, I encourage you even more so to buy some of the collections that Myers mentioned earlier on and read them in your own time on paper, and support the Langston Hughes estate because these really are phenomenal pieces of work. But I think I would just look at the beginning of the poem, which begins, I've known rivers, I've known rivers, ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

And what that establishes immediately is a direct correlation between the flowing of water and the life force, if you will, of the human race in particular. I suppose the African American experience and perhaps even the experience that predates, the arrival in many cases, forced arrival. Of black people in America, this sense of it being a timeless [00:08:00] association with running water.

And that's so interesting because obviously there is a singularity to the flow of a river. It only flows in one direction and it flows regardless of the forces that seek to stop it. Of course there are dams which stop the flow of water, but broadly speaking, the flow of a river is singular and flows in a singular consistent direction.

And by associating that kind of singular focus, that that urgent, forthright energy with the kind of story of the human race, it's interesting because Hughes is kind of positioning himself as one part of a much greater movement in a single direction. Now we can obviously look at that and compare that to what I've mentioned about the great migration.

This, this movement of people is therefore aligned with this natural movement of water from one place to the next. So that's the first thing I would look to focus on. Now, I wanna do a little bit of a deep dive on some of the named rivers that, that Maiya talked about earlier on. In particular, I wanna talk about some of those perhaps less famous rivers.

So obviously the [00:09:00] Nile, possibly the world's most famous river. Alongside the Amazon, we have the Mississippi, which is very famous, but I'm interested in those first two, the Euphrates and the Congo, and. Let's start with the Euphrates. Euphrates is this very, very famous river in Asia. it's not the biggest, but it's this incredibly resonant symbol, which goes back right the way to pre biblical times.

But I'm interested in this biblical context here because it specifies in the Bible that the Euphrates is one of the four rivers that flows from the Garden of Eden. So you have this relationship between this river that, Langston Hughes's narrator say that they have bathed in when Dawns were young, almost at the, the birth of the universe and the biblical.

Realm of paradise, the idea that they have some kind of connection to that world before sin, before, all of the terrible things that coincide with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. I also think there's something really interesting there. Of course, Langston Hughes writing, in a period of immense racism in America to associate [00:10:00] himself and his voice with those figures of Adam and Eve, the idea that he is as close to them as any other human has been because of course, so much of Western art in the last few thousand years has presented those figures as quintessentially pale skinned and white blonde haired often.

So to associate his. Appearance. His dark skin with those characters, I think is an interesting way in which he's subverting, those kind of artistic tropes to present these biblical figures, as much paler skin than they likely would've been based on the area of the world in which those biblical stories took place.

But the other river that I'm interested in is that mention of the Congo River, and I actually mentioned this in our last episode in a very different context. We were talking about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but the Congo River has a particularly troubled history, particularly in the past 150 years, because of the actions of King Leopold, and the establishment of the Congo Free state.

Now this is perhaps most famously rendered in the novel Heart of Darkness, in which Joseph Conrad's figure the white European figure sails down the [00:11:00] Congo, to try and find, Colonel Kurtz. And again, I won't summarize the entire novel, but it's this very, very controversial, very interesting story about the meeting of the European colonizer.

And, you know, as he delves deeper and deeper into Africa, along the river. And there is this very troubling sense that as he goes further down the river, he is kind of going back in time. And this has been a very, very controversial, Way of looking at this journey, because of course that is in many ways very disrespectful to the millions of Africans who were living there and who suffered terribly at the hands of King Leopold and the Congo Free state.

I mean, some of the worst atrocities in human history were conducted in and around this river. So you have this symbol on the one hand that is all about life. Giving proximity to the river is what gives people life. People tend to live near to rivers because it's a source of water and food. And yet the Congo River has this kind of dark association with death and blood.

And I think that Hughes's decision to refer to rivers as being similar to the [00:12:00] veins captures that, deep uncertainty, that deep contradiction about these bodies of water. As something life giving and also something very close to death and suffering. And I think it's that ability to hold those two things in tandem.

Something that is on the one hand vital on the other hand, like a harboring or of doom as something that speaks to the tragedy and the beauty of the African American experience that informed the Harlem Renaissance, this incredible union of artists and storytelling and incredible talent that is bought about as a result of terrible racism, oppression, lynching, slavery.

And it's that ability to hold those two things in tandem in this poem, all of it imbued within the symbol of these rivers that is really, really moving to me.

Maiya: I couldn't agree with you more. I think one of Hughes's, you know, absolute key abilities is. Power to hold two things together at once in the same poem, even if they are kind of diametrically opposed. And he manages to bring a real beauty out of the trauma of those places.

But what he also [00:13:00] manages to do is hold time ' in, vastly different spaces, and yet he manages to bring them together in such a stunning way. And in this poem, what you get is that chronological tracking from, you know, that birth of Adam and Eve, the inception of the human all the way through to the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln at the Mississippi, and these are both incredibly powerful images. And what always stands out to me in this poem is the impression of freedom we get. At no point here does the speaker feel entrapped or enslaved. They are absolutely singular. They have the freedom to bathe in the Euphrates. They build a hut and lull them to sleep.

There is a peace, even despite all of the trauma that accompanies the story of the Congo. They manage to find peace by sleeping next to it. And it. is the movement of that water that gives the impression that maybe this isn't a permanent state. There change being brought about in this poem, and there's so much to say about this poem. I know we've [00:14:00] got limited time 'cause there's so many we want to talk about today. But it's also worth flagging in this poem that the way that Hughes describes beauty is quite against the traditional Western standards that you would imagine. We talk about a muddy bosom turning golden and ancient dusky rivers. these descriptors all have a depth. And of course, we can't ignore the fact that when we're talking about an African American poet, color is important. The color of your skin was a defining factor. So when we mention words that are used as descriptors in this poem, the depth of the color that they imply is equally important and resonant in this poem. 

Joe: Like you, Maiya, I could talk about this for such a long time. I think before we move on to the next poem, there's just two things I'd like to share. I think the first is, obviously regular listeners will know that like Maiya, I'm very interested in titles and I should have said this earlier when you were talking about that title, is that the thing that Hughes prioritizes isn't the rivers itself necessarily, it's the ownership of the storytelling about the river.

It's [00:15:00] owning the narrative that obviously so much of the African American experience, the early African American experience was defined by other people. Where African Americans didn't have a voice, didn't have the way to tell their own stories, and there is something about Hughes reaching back into the distant past and doing so speaking on behalf of people who were voiceless.

A negro speaks of rivers that feels like a kind of retroactive justice giving voice to generations of people whose voices we never heard. And the other thing I think I would look to mention about this poem, again, that was a point about Hughes looking back, but. there is so much that Hughes predicts in the future and so much that he goes on to influence.

I mean, the number of artists I think, that have credited Hughes as a key influence, particularly African American artists, and we'll talk about this later on, and the likes of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, but there's a really pleasing circularity, I think, to, to the fact that Hughes was so influenced by music.

And we talked about, earlier on, Maiya mentioned [00:16:00] jazz poetry, this kind of very fluid form of poetry, very much inspired by the rhythms and the improvisation nature of jazz music. So music was a huge part of his creative process, but I think. It's very interesting to read a poem like this with its focus on rivers and look forward into the future to 1964 to the release of the song.

A Change is Gonna Come by. Sam Cooke voted, I think, the third greatest song of all time, by Rolling Stone Magazine, which of course very famously begins with that kind of beautiful but haunting image. I was born by the river and like the river I've been running ever since. That association between the black experience and the movement of this water, the idea that you can't stay in one place because you are perhaps not wanted there.

That there is a fluidity, an energy, a vitality, but also a danger. All of those complex, often contradictory emotions are kind of imbued in this symbol of running water. And I don't think you can have a song like [00:17:00] that, in 1964 without poetry like this, that helps sustain and enshrine that poetic association.

Maiya: What an excellent way to put it, Joe. I think that was absolutely perfect, and let's not forget as well how important water is to the black experience. I think it's a really telling piece here that there is a reclamation that's being made because of course it's important to note that many of the migrations that initially happened were against the will of the people who were being transported for the slave trade.

To be able to reclaim that journey and actually track back even further to be able to say, well, yes, your history started here for me. For my people. It's all the way back in history. There is so much depth and meaning to that.

And actually there's a, there's a whole genre dedicated to that called Afrofuturism, where black writers take original histories and rewrite them into the future. And they imagine a world in which things have been different the whole time. I think it's a really beautiful thing.

And actually one of the [00:18:00] things I wanted to pick up on what you just said, Joe, was that impression of consistent movement because we get the voices of so many people through Hughes’s poetry. And the next poem we're going to talk about is through the lens of a working class mother who is talking about her journey up some stairs.

But the stairs are an extended metaphor for her journey through life. And I guess my question for you is. When we take this focus on consistent upward movement or consistent forward movement, there is an impression of progress that's made there. But What does Hughes do by giving us a slightly different narrator than the lyric eye?

What does he tell us by using the voice of this working class mother in Mother to Son?

Joe: Well, I feel like on some level that functions as a kind of manifestation of the thing that I've just been speaking about, about that kind of calling back to the past and how the past resonates in the present because obviously, while a mother and son are, relatively speaking quite close in age compared to the kind of stretch of history that Langston Hughes is talking about [00:19:00] in The Negro Speaks of Rivers, there is still that sense of an older world and a newer one.

And, you know, I'm sure everybody feels quite different to their parents that, one generation, the outlook of the world can change a lot, especially, at the point we're talking about, I mean, in the, 1920s when this poem was being written and in the 19 teens when Hughes was growing up, there were lots of people who remembered the Emancipation Proclamation. This is not ancient history, in the way that it sometimes seems, in the modern world, of course it's not ancient history and it, you know, remains pertinent and, continues to have impact in the modern world.

But I think that the dialogue that the lessons being handed down are a reflection of Hughes's willingness to engage with the past and the future in a way that I think a lot of people, especially kind of poetic radicals, people who are looking to carve out their own path, are very dismissive of the past.

It's important for us to remember that in the 1920s, this is the golden era of poetic movements, the early 19.

So it's important to remember where we are here. This is the 1920s, the early 20th century. This is very much the [00:20:00] golden era of poetic movements. You know, everybody and their mother is putting out a manifesto. And lots of these things are about breaking with the past, are about, doing away with conventional, poetic and artistic wisdom.

So to have a movement like this, which in many ways is tussling with the parts of the past that they want to keep and the parts of the past which they wish to redefine, is really, really ing And I think the dialogue between mother and son speaks to that experience that Hughes is constantly going through.

And other members of the Harlem Renaissance are doing this as well, where. They're having to reconcile a very painful past, both personally and of course, on behalf of kind of the collective black experience in America and work out which parts of it are worth retelling or which parts of it need to be retold in their own words. before we move on to this poem, Mother to Son, written and published in 1922, Maiya, do you mind telling listeners a little bit about what's going on within this poem? Any lines in particular you'd like to focus [00:21:00] on?

Maiya: well, thanks Joe. As we've said over the kind of past few minutes, Mother to Son is actually a direct address from a mother to her son talking about her experience going through life. And she uses this extended metaphor of going up a set of stairs. And there are some real lovely points in this poem that I think it's worth focusing on because what Hughes explores in this poem is a really simple metaphor. The idea that these stairs have no carpet, that they are splintered. There's some boards torn up. It is, in essence a very simple image, but the representation that we get from that is one that is so enduring. So there are a few lines in this poem that I'd really like to kind of flag and, and read out, but I think it's important to note before I actually read it aloud, is that this poem is written in colloquial voice. And again, this is another poetic method from Hughes that makes his poetry that much more powerful. He uses the voice of this working class mother, someone who has been through hard times, and he offers her a [00:22:00] voice in this poem that is instructive. It's not the voice of someone who has been downtrodden.

It's the voice of someone who has hope, who is looking to uplift the next generation. And that's why I think we can. Explore this poem as something maybe in, in some ways a little bit more hopeful than some of Hughes's other work, but also as something that really stands the test of time. Of course, the relationship between a mother and a son is an enduring family bond.

You don't have to have the exact same experiences as the speaker in this poem, but you can really resonate with it if you've ever gone through anything. So, as I say, it's written in a colloquial voice. I will try my absolute best, to kind of keep to the true tone of it. But these are the lines I'd like to focus on all the time as being a climbing on and reaching landings and turning corners and sometimes going in the dark where there ain’t been no light. And now I think is really beautiful about these lines is actually the stopping points because of course, you know, our [00:23:00] traditional image of a set of stairs is a relatively linear path.

You start at the bottom, you go up one set of stairs and then you are at the top of them. However the impression we get of the stairs in this poem is that there are kind of twists and turns, there are landings. And those landings I think are actually a, really subtle nod to the fact that progress is being made.

This is not a consistent, arduous journey, but there are moments of respite and that is such a beautiful image to me when the impression of the stairs that we get at the opening for this poem. Is that they are kind of hard, is that they are hard worn. They have been knocked, they have been through the ringer.

You know, there are, as I said, splinters, there are broken boards. But actually as we follow the mother on this journey, she's instructing that there are moments of respite. So again, it adds to this sense of hope because the sun knows it isn't going to be an endless journey.

There will be moments where progress is being made. You can almost mark that point and say, I have made it [00:24:00] here and I am going to continue. And that's just such a beautiful image in my head. But Joe, is there anything you'd like to really focus on in this poem 

Joe: first thing I would talk about is that use of the colloquial voice of vernacular, because it's worth noting that while this has become kind of a very well trodden, literary trope, over the past kind of a hundred years, this was still quite a radical thing to do, to write, the voice as authentically spoken, whether that's based on class, based on race, or based on, being a second language speaker and

it's worth noting again that this is something that is also adopted in, one of the key novels of the Harlem Renaissances, which is Zora Neale Hurston's incredible novel. Their Eyes Were Watching God. I mean, it genuinely one of the most, astounding pieces of literary work I think I've ever read.

And again, there is some, it seems very simple to us now, but, putting a person's voice on paper, the way they actually speak it is an immensely empowering thing to do. And, you know, the early 20th century, the late 19th century, this was being done for the first time, among [00:25:00] African American authors.

So worth noting that that's, not a minor thing that Hughes is doing here. It's remains a radical step in the early 1920s. But the other thing I think I would look to focus on in those lines in particular is the use of anaphora. We have three lines in a row that begin with that word, and, and, and, and what that does is it creates a sense of forward momentum that is in many ways contrary to the fact that this is somebody going up a flight of stairs, which obviously has no momentum.

But you have to generate all of your own momentum. And I wonder whether or not we can kind of contrast that sense of something that requires struggle and yet has an inevitability to it with the river of the previous poem, because obviously a river does flow freely regardless of what we do to it.

Climbing a flight of stairs is not like a river. It requires a much more deliberate choice, a much more of an active decision to reach the top of the flight of stairs. And yet the anaphora creates a sense as inevitable as the flowing of the river. And I wonder whether Hughes is speaking to the sense of resilience that he witnessed in himself and in [00:26:00] others.

the sense of perseverance, the ability to overcome obstacles. And he's implying that they will climb this flight of stairs, this metaphorical flight of stairs, no matter how many obstacles are put in their way. It is as inevitable as the flowing of water from a river to the sea.

Maiya: It's really interesting that you say that to actually, as you were talking about the inevitability piece, I was thinking about the stares themselves. Of course, yes, you have to generate power for them, but stares in themselves are a representation of wealth in some way. So maybe this is another slightly subversive, note from Hughes because of course if we talk about class, you know, let's absolutely extrapolate it here.

If you go to any palace or mansion, you have hundreds of stairs in these properties because they have so many floors and so many different areas. What we refer to in this poem is a set of crystal stairs, which again, alludes to this kind of wealthiness. But as I said, if we're gonna extrapolate this and look at your mansions and your palaces, you also have to look at those who live in poverty. You know huge families that live in one room, in one floor [00:27:00] of a house. Actually having a set of stairs that takes you to another floor of your property tells me that you are moving up through the classes, which I think, again, is this. Really beautiful nod to this migration.

Not only is it a migration across the country, but there is an indication of social mobility here as well. 

Joe: I think the thing that I would look to focus on with regard to those staircases, I think your, your interpretation is absolutely right, though on the one hand, the moving up the staircases could be referring to kind of an upward mobility in terms of social class and wealth.

this mention of two different types of staircase. The second line life for me ain't being no crystal stair. And we then juxtapose that image, presumably of a very attractive, very ornate staircase with the much more basic staircase described. The rest of the poem, my initial assumptions that these are staircases in different buildings.

For obvious reasons, they're very different. And yet there could be a suggestion that actually this is the same building, but referring to the effect of the Jim Crow laws and the idea that black and white [00:28:00] people in the same building had to use different staircases often, if black people were working, they had to enter by different lifts, different staircases, in this kind of incredibly divisive, era of the Jim Crow laws under the false skies of being separate but equal, which of course eventually was, done away with as a result of the civil rights movement.

So I love the fact that we can read this poem and either think of these two staircases as being in completely different houses as they seem or actually view them in the same building. They might only be separated by a matter of meters and a thin wall. And that geographical proximity kind of makes a mockery of the difference in life experience between the two types of people using these staircases day by day.

Maiya: What a great link to our next poem that I wanted to talk about, which is arguably Langston Hughes most famous poem. I too, which again, talks about black experience in America and actually having a seat at the table. And it's wonderful, Joe, that you bring in that concept of these kind of two different spaces, [00:29:00] or whether actually they were in the same house.

Because this poem is absolutely clear , that the table that the speaker is wanting to sit at, is going to sit at, is in the same house, in the same space as where he has been previously denied. I think, This poem is just exceptional. But I have to ask you, Joe, I'll give you the starting point this time. What do you want to talk about in this poem ? 

Joe: I'm gonna cheat a little bit 'cause I'm gonna start at the beginning and at the end. And what I mean by that is the first line of the last line are these kind of mirror images of each other. It's not a long poem. None of the poems we're looking at today are very long. And again, I implore listeners again, go and read these poems no entirety.

We can't read them all out loud. but please go and read them. They're not, it won't take you long and it's well worth it. But the first line of this poem is I too Sing America. And there's commas either side of that word too, which kind of really encourage you to pause on. Why he has the need to insert himself as additionally.

And the insinuation clearly is that other people have already spoken for America [00:30:00] as though they spoke for the entire nation. Whereas Langston Hughes narrator are saying, no, no, I too have a voice. And the people that look like me and share my life experiences also are part of the conversation of what America is.

But I mentioned earlier on when we were talking about the first poem, how the title suggests that there is value in owning the narrative, even if you are talking about people who had very little agency in their own lives. And I think the thing I love about this poem is the first line I too sing America by the time of the poem's conclusion is I too am America.

And what that speaks to for me is hughes's belief that owning your story You can manifest your own reality. And again, I'm not wishing to sound like some kind of self-help guru. There is a sense here that in order to own your future and to have agency in the present, you have to own the past and you have to reach back and tell your story the way that you want it to be told.

And again, it's so important for us to remember that so many of the terrible [00:31:00] crimes that were committed during the slave trade in the Congo, by the Belgians and all other parts of the world, not just in Africa, of course, are mediated through the experience of the colonizers, of the people perpetrating the crimes, not the victims of them.

And what Hughes, I think is hyper aware of is the fact that he feels a responsibility to give voice to the voiceless. And by giving that voice, by looking back into the past and reclaiming that narrative without. Sugarcoating it without brushing away the horrors, but reclaiming it in his own voice.

He feels that that gives him some kind of agency, a foothold in the present, a way that he can make the next generation, have a better experience in the country that he feels a part of and he wants to assert his ownership of. And I find that one word change between the first and the last line. So powerful and such an interesting love letter to the power of art, the power of poetry to reclaim narratives and to change the future.

Maiya: And critically here as [00:32:00] well. I mean, listeners have to be aware. This is a direct response to Walt Whitman's claim that he can sing America. Whitman was a white American man. Often laed as kind of the, the voice of America at the time that he was writing. he claimed the voices of all Americans. And yet, is it possible to write from a place that you have no idea about? Is it possible to write on behalf of the African American population in America when you yourself are a white man and haven't gone through the struggles that they've gone through? So that claim is really resonant here because what Hughes is doing is saying not just that he sings America, he's not kind of writing alongside Whitman.

He's saying, I too sing America. That is a very direct hit against what Whitman was claiming, and I think that is absolutely critical to pay attention to because as Joe said, this is about rewriting your own narrative. This is about taking the work of the past and changing it to make it [00:33:00] your own. And that is exactly what he's doing by kind of testifying against Whitman's claim. He's taking what Whitman has put out into the world. He is changing it and making it his own in a way that is resonant for him. And that is just so gorgeous. And it's no wonder that this poem has stood the test of time.

And perhaps this might be a slightly Whitman esque question, especially talking about the American dream here. the final poem I wanted to touch on today is Harlem Dream Deferred.

Now this poem is one of Hughes later works. It was written, through the 1940s, but it wasn't published until 1951. So I guess I have two questions for you, Joe, which is, do you think this poem has a different tone to some of the previous poems we've explored? And also, you know, let's sink our teeth into this poem. Before we end this episode, what is this poem talking about? Why is this poem important?

Joe: It's a big question. I think you're absolutely right that we cannot view a poem like this without taking into account the context of [00:34:00] the American Dream. you know, and again, many of our listeners will have a sense of what that is. But effectively we're talking about this belief, a kind of national belief in the consciousness of America.

the belief in hard work, the belief that you can achieve the belief that if you, commit, you can achieve the things you want to achieve in those things are often measured in financial terms. You know, you'll have a big house, you'll be able to, look after your kids, send your kids to college, et cetera.

It's, it's the belief and the power of the individual that I suppose, underpins so much of American life. You know, I would argue some of the greatest works of American literature are the works that undermine the, the fallacy of the American dream. I'm thinking about Gatsby, I'm thinking about Arthur Miller's death of a salesman.

You know, these are all literary works that point out the hypocrisy. Earlier on, I mentioned the many, many writers, critics, et cetera, who've been influenced by Hughes, and I think I mentioned James Baldwin. and again, for anyone who hasn't checked out James Baldwin's critical work or his novels, I mean, he's an incredible writer, incredible thinker, and he really comes to mind when I read this poem for a couple of reasons.

One, because he, I think, [00:35:00] expressed much of the same frustration that Hughes is expressing in this poem. I mention this is the poet. As an older man, perhaps frustrated at the speed of change or the slow nature of that change, this notion that the African American population should perhaps be patient, be grateful for the change that had been, achieved already.

And perhaps if they just give it a bit more time, they'll get their slice of America, if you will. And it comes to mind because, there was a clip I saw of, of Baldwin effectively undermining this point when he said, how long must I wait for your progress? But a more famous example is debate he gave at the Cambridge Union in 1965, this incredible center of learning in Britain, in which I believe he's the only black man present.

And the nature of this debate,, the, motion that was being debated is whether or not the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro. And what we have here is. I think Hugh's pointing to this fallacy of the American dream, the idea that there is a dream for Americans. Well, [00:36:00] the American Dream has, in many cases predicated the success of the individual is predicated on the failure of others because the American dream requires that other people don't achieve it in order for you to achieve it.

If you get the big business, the wealth, the car, the big house, and you have other people working for you, those are all people with families and dreams who wanted to achieve what you've achieved. It is a, a kind of very lopsided vision, and that's even if we assume that everybody has the same starting point, which of course we know they don't.

so I think there is a degree of frustration in this poem. I think the tone speaks to that, and I think, again, I'm amazed by the way this poem kind of resonates through literary and cultural history. I think the other thing I want to kind of really point out, uh, in addition to the Baldwin debate in 1965, another really key moment that it owes a lot to this poem is the play. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry first performed in 1959.

So again, eight years after this poem is published and it takes its title from this poem, I'm just gonna read the first three lines of the poem. What happens to a dream deferred? [00:37:00] Does it dry up like A Raisin in the Sun? And the title of Lorraine Hansberry Play is A Raisin in the Sun, which is hugely groundbreaking for any number of reasons.

It was very hard to get funded because all bar one of the cast were black. And remember this is in a time when America is so divided along racial lines. Very few people were willing to fund this play. It eventually went on for 530 performances. Hugely groundbreaking moment about the black experience and about the frustration at being, an African American in this world that seemed so designed against you.

And the fact that. Lorraine Hansberry looks at this poem for inspiration for that play and for the title for her play, I think speaks to the, malaise and the growing sense of outrage that Langston Hughes and his contemporaries, who I think a lot of those writers felt that they were really making progress in the 1930s and 1920s. I think there was a real sense of frustration that more hadn't been achieved. I think this poem captures that frustration in a way that is so palpable that it gives way to these two [00:38:00] other iconic productions.

One is the theater production in 1959, and one is this incredible James Baldwin debate. And I really encourage anybody when you are reading these Langston Hughes poems, don't stop there. Let that be your jumping off point to discover some of these other incredible writers and literary moments, because they really do define a lot of the 20th century, especially in terms of social development in the United States.

But Maiya, I've talked a lot there around the poem drawing kind of links between them. Is there anything I've said that you wanna pick up on or do you want to dive into the poem itself?

Maiya: . Well, there are two things really, Joe, jumping off the back of your points there. And one is that context is incredibly important. So at the time that this poem is being written, we know it's roughly written around the 1940s, as I said earlier, which is of course, in the wake of World War II, millions of Americans were drafted.

of which a percentage were. Of course black Americans, African Americans, drafted into the military. So. Not only are we getting a return from these Americans who have fought for their country and are returning home to [00:39:00] less civil rights than the men who fought alongside them. So this is also a, a kind of call to arms against the fact that there is a disillusionment because of course in wartime you get these speeches about being a union, being united, forcing forward together.

There is a language of community to then return home to a place that is even more segregated, is really quite a, you know, a jarring experience. It doesn't really sit well with the experience that they've had over the past few years. So I think in many ways this poem is, a call to action, a complaint against those kind of reduced liberties, because of course, these, you know. Of course, these African American fighting men were doing the exact same service as every other man in America, and yet they were coming home to significantly reduce liberties. So again, this is a critique of the American dream here, but I actually really wanted to pick up on your point, and I guess this sits outside of the poem, Joe, but just about the kind of continuations of Hughes, because Yes, absolutely, [00:40:00] you know, listen to Baldwin's speeches, read Baldwin, explore all of the people that Hughes interacted with.

But we can track it all the way forward to contemporary figures in pop culture. Now, Kendrick Lamar is a great example in many of his stage productions, he actually repeats that kind of line from the end of I too, and he says, I too am America.

He is a continuation of that language, that critique of the American system. for any kind of Kendrick Lamar listeners out there, the album to Pimp a Butterfly was strongly influenced by Hughes and specifically that kind of poetic turn throughout that album, there are not only kind of spoken word poems, but there are also, you know, strong critiques of what the American Dream is, how it's unachievable, what the black experience in America is.

So Hughes isn't just a standalone artist from the Harlem Renaissance, which was a small period of history. He is someone that has. Created absolute shock waves through these [00:41:00] communities. And that is one of the most critical things that I think a listener can keep in mind when they're approaching Hughes's work because it doesn't sit alone.

And you know, Joe, I know we always say this on the podcast, but poetry doesn't exist in a vacuum, right? These are conversations that consistently Occur and let's not forget as well, the most important thing to note here is the Harlem Renaissance, was a huge movement. More so than you know, probably many of the poetic movements we've talked about before. these artists, writers, essayists speakers, are having conversations. They are actively in the same spaces, they are seeking the same spaces and seeking that kind of intellectual debate. So this is a. Far less a vacuum than any other movement we've probably discussed. And I think that's really important to pay attention to because you are going to read Hughes’s poetry.

You are going to then read, a critical essay by W. E. B. Du Bois and you'll see echoes. And those echoes are what strengthen, [00:42:00] the, forward movement of many of the kind of more political elements of these poems. And yeah, I guess that's my advice, kind of talking around this poem.

Joe: We say this every time, Maiya, but I could have kept on talking about those poems and others by Hughes for a very, very long time. And I really hope that listeners take your call to action and go and let this be the starting point of their exploration of these writers, not the end point. I really enjoyed that conversation.

Hopefully listeners did too. As always, just a reminder that if you have enjoyed the podcast, please remember to like, review, recommend it. It really does help us grow, help us keep bringing these brilliant poems, into these conversations, which we so enjoy having.

So we're finishing up today's episode, but next time we have a really exciting episode. We're talking about, remember by Christina Rossetti, and I can't wait for that conversation. But for now, it's goodbye from me.

Maiya: Goodbye from me and the team at PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+. Until next time. [00:43:00]