Planting New Roots

I was having trouble last week getting on to the blog, but here's what my thoughts were from last week's readings:

I was particularly drawn to the poetry of Langston Hughes.

Hughes was greatly concerned with the black man's role in a predominantly white America at the time. Many of his poems seek to find the African-American voice in the constant buzzing of the Modernist period. One poem in particular that highlights this concept is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." In it Hughes depicts a close relationship between his roots and his relationship to Mother Earth.

For instance, Hughes rattles off the names of three ancient rivers in the third stanza: the Euphrates, the Congo, and the Nile. He then mentions a fairly "new" river in the Mississippi. To try to understand Hughes's meaning in the poem, I tried to look at this middle stanza in pairs. For example, "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young./I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep" depict a time of innocence followed by a time of tranquility. The next two lines deal with more profound images. Hughes mentions raising pyramids before the Nile and also the singing on the Mississippi as Lincoln sails down it. Although the pyramids may at first seem like a great accomplishment, I think Hughes is actually writing with a sarcastic tone because he knows it was slaves that built the awesome structures. This line is then contrasted with the image of Lincoln wading through the South. It is an incredible vision of freedom.

This poem hit a chord with me because it made me realize that Hughes was trying to portray the black man's history in the new world. I think it was also a chance to show that the proud black race has been putting down new sturdy roots in America.

In a time period when much of the world was fractured, Hughes's poetry was an attempt to let new roots sprout through the cracks of society.