Langston Hughes and W. H. Auden are two highly educated authors, who came from very different cultural backgrounds. Literary contemporaries, contemporaries in that they were both working writers during the same time period, Hughes and Auden are known for literary works which tackle both moral and political issues. Langston Hughes's and W. H. Auden's poems "Ballad of the Landlord" and "Miss Gee" exhibit each author's ability to employ the use of a traditional poetic form to tell a fanciful yet haunting story of characters whose initial qualities are comedic and simple. Both poems are similar in that they are ballads, they rhyme, and they both end in tragedy; however the tragic outcomes for each of the stories characters are as different as the authors who wrote them and the variations on the style they chose to tell these stories.…
Langston Hughes is one of those incredible people. The way his poems bring a sensation to them that some other poets can’t even process. “Hughes was a very complex person, split between a sophisticated consciousness and a fierce determination to create a popular and simplified poetic art” (Bloom 10). Langston Hughes had a way of reaching his people by speaking to the black people and putting down everyday life for them. He helped form a new kind of poetry with more rhythm style. “Hughes was an established figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement characterized by an explosion of black literature, theater, music, painting, and political and racial consciousness”(Meyers 908). Jazz was growing during the Harlem Renaissance and Langston captured that in jazz poetry. “Jazz poetry is a literary genre defined as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music… Jazz poetry, like the music itself, encompasses a variety of forms, rhythms, and sounds.” (A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry). Jazz poetry can be seen as a thread that runs through the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat movement, and the Black Arts Movement. Jazz poems are supposed to bring a vivid imagery in your head. To which Langston could write poems that could almost make you feel…
Hughes mainly wrote in free verse to get across the ideas lingering in his mind, however, in some cases he wrote in jazz poetry (Williams 1). Jazz poetry is a style of writing that brought together the characteristics of writing and the style of jazz. The technique of jazz poetry is not only something used in Langston Hughes’ literature, it is something that Hughes was first to experiment with and therefore created (Williams 1). Langston Hughes explored with jazz in several of his works tracing all the way back to highschool. In high school the jazz poem “When Sue Wears Red” was created (Williams 1). Hughes’ jazz poems in high school were just the beginning, he published a book of poems called “The Weary Blues” (Williams 1). Throughout time Langston Hughes mastered the skill of jazz poetry to the point that “in The Weary Blues, romantic love shapes the ghetto into moonlit roof-tops and turns cabaret jazz into an echo for two singing evening strollers” (Emanuel 129). Langston Hughes also features jazz in the poem “Jazzonia”. Hughes…
Finally, in response to Dr. Davis’ call for a unique information about the artists, I came across with an information that I did not include in my paper for a reason that I could not corroborate it with our official source which is the San Jac Library. This is about Langston Hughes, Historians argued that Langston Hughes is asexual (unattracted to either sex) or he was attracted to men based on his unpublished…
The imagery in Langston Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues” explains the theme of dejection and the relief that music can bring. In the first line the words droning and drowsy appear, immediately reflecting the tone of tiredness first stated in the poem’s title. These two words, droning and drowsy, describe the blues, the type of music the narrator is hearing. Hughes’ imagery is further reinforced by his description of the ambient light as a “pale dull pallor of an old gas light” (5). An old gas light, giving off a faint glow from behind dirty and yellowing glass, helps illuminate the weariness of the blues player as he does a lazy sway to his weary blues.…
During the time known as the Harlem Renaissance, there where many historical figures who contributed to the works of the newly found African American movement. Many people of the African race or ancestry, where bold enough and willing enough to write songs and/or poems with underlining messages expressing there feelings towards society and themselves. Such a poet was Langston Hughes, one of the most historically known figure throughout the era. He wrote poems of such messages, while incorporating themes of jazz and blues in his works. He stuck out as a very influential person for others to admire and come to for inspiration. He was able to do this through poems he wrote like, As I Grew Older.…
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes is an influential protest poem that depicts a man in a blues bar, who is playing away at the piano, singing the blues. The poem was obviously developed at the time of the Harlem Renaissance and was published in 1923. The weary blues won multiple awards due to its influential style of writing. The Weary Blues was publish in a place called Harlem, which was filled with musical and artistic potential. At the time of the Harlem Renaissance, the musical genre known as the blues was used day in day out. People around the world could easily relate to this poem because everyone has felt sad, depressed and down. The theme of the poem is mainly about living with the use of music and the suffering that was brought upon…
The Weary Blues' rhythmic and lyric-like style was greatly influenced by jazz music of the time. This connection between music and poetry paved the way for future styles of modern poetry, specifically the beat poets of the 1950's such as Allen Ginsberg (Tracy 2). Langston Hughes' poetry became so successful as readers sought sympathy in their daily lives. Hughes "drowsy syncopated tunes" evoked feelings of loneliness, sadness and other sentiments of the downtrodden. His simple language and slow rhythm share with the reader more of the "Weary Blues" feeling than the actual words in some poems (Cooke 1). In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", Hughes states that "I've known rivers ancient as the world and older that the flow of human blood in human veins." This poem focuses on the history of black slavery throughout the…
Like many others, Langston Hughes incorporated Jazz and the Blues into his poems and became mostly known for that. “The Weary Blues,” written in 1925 was first published in the Urban League Magazine for being chosen poem of the year by the magazine. This poem was basically written Walt Whitman style, meaning he had a lot of free verse, wrote freely, but had integrated jazz like blue music into this poem. At the beginning of The Weary Blues, it starts off with a musician playing a slow blues song with his body and soul. Towards the end, it seems to get less exciting as in more depressed wishing to be dead. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” published in the Crisis Magazine (National Association for the Advancements of Colored People) in 1921, was the beginning…
“ Hughes shapes its substance to the cadences, accents, and ductile phrases familiar to most Negroes; and he weaves incident, personality, and racial history into recurrent patterns”(Hunter 176). One of the reasons why Langston Hughes had such great success was because he was equally sensitive to the dignity that African Americans endured as well as their endured or resisted oppression. His works aren’t always serious and raw, in some of his works he incorporates another talent that he has. “ With humor, one of his rare gifts, Hughes injects comfortable chuckles into much of his poetry and prose”(Emanuel…
Langston Hughes believed that black artists should focus on the widespread and create individual “Negro” art. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”. Considered among the greatest poets in U.S. history, Hughes was one of the earliest innovators of jazz poetry, poetry that “demonstrates jazz-like rhythm”. His works often portrayed the lives of middle class African Americans. Hughes was a proponent of creating distinctive “Negro” art and not falling for the “urge within the race toward whiteness”…
Influenced by the need to share the society of black American life during the 1920s through 1960s, Langston Hughes was inspired by jazz music which was popular among black Americans during the time of his writing. He told the stories of his people in ways that mirrored their genuine culture, including both their agony and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. The poems written by Hughes, “Dream Boogie” and “The weary Blues” best exemplify his love for music in his work while also combining the view of a black American’s struggle with everyday life. Both poems are based around music,…
“The Weary Blues,” by Langston Hughes, tells a story of an unnamed narrator recalling an evening of listening to a man sing the blues one night in Harlem. Hughes uses a somber tone, depressed voice, syntax and imagery as language styles to convey a great deal of suffering that was occurring in Harlem during the mid-1900’s.…
What happens when you don’t hold on to a dream? Langston Hughes’ “Dreams” and “Dreams Deferred” discuss this issue. They are written with similar themes, but differ in writing styles.…
In 1859 Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about death. In 1861 she rewrote that poem with very different imagery making it a lot darker. The poem itself is rather short, only two stanzas. The first stanza is only changed by one word, though its meaning is significant. The second stanza however changes completely, from light and spring like to dark and wintery. There is also significant change in punctuation and additional dashes in the second piece. This is a classic characteristic of Emily Dickinson writing and since she never explained it to anyone before her death we can only take a guess as to what it really means.…