Close Reading: The Negro Speaks of Rovers

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is a racial poem written by the African-American poet Langston Hughes that gives an account of the experiences of Negros across time. Hughes employs a diversity of literary elements that add to the success of the piece; this exposition seeks to outline and discuss those elements.
The piece is divided into five stanzas. The first stanza is made up of three lines, the second stanza is made up of one line, the third stanza is made up of six lines, the fourth stanza is made up of two lines, and the fifth stanza is made up of a single line. There is no use of rhyme scheme in this piece and the poet employs enjambment. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was written in the first person point of view, with the use of pronouns like “my” and “I”. Hughes also uses simple words, although the use of words like “Euphrates”, “Nile”, “pyramids” and “Mississippi” suggest that he is knowledgeable. The use of the first person point of view is to make the reader relate to the poem better, and the use of simple words make the piece easy to understand. It also adds to the theme of ‘unity’ in the piece.
One peculiar thing about the structure of the piece is its shape. In the piece, the persona speaks about several rivers, and in an attempt to emphasize this, Hughes indents line three as well as lines ten nine and ten. Indenting these give the structure of the piece a wavy look, a shape resembling the movement of moving water. It can also be seen that at the beginning of the piece the number of words used per line swells and eventually dwindles: from three words to about seven words and finally three words. This increase and decrease in words per line depicts the character of a wave, which grows in the beginning and dwindles at it gets to the shore, spreading at its very last existence.
Hughes uses repetition and parallelism in the piece. In lines four and thirteen, repetition is used for emphasis. With the repetition of the words, “My soul has grown deep like