hughes
Langston Hughes: A Poet Supreme Black poetry is poetry that (1) is grounded in the black experience; (2) utilizes black music as a structural or emulative model; and (3) "consciously" transforms the prevailing standards of poetry through and inconoclastic and innovative use of language. No poet better carries the mantle of model and innovator the Langston Hughes, the prolific Duke Ellington of black poetry. Hughes's output alone is staggering. During his lifetime, he published over eight hundred poems. Moreover, he single-handedly defined "blues poetry" and is arguably the first major "jazz" poet. Early in his career he realized the importance of "reading" his poetry to receptive audiences. "When Alain Locke arranged a poetry reading by Hughes before the Playwriter's Circle in 1972 in Washington, a blues pianist accompanied him, bringing Hughes the artist and blues music one step closer together, even though Hughes felt that the piano player was 'too polished.' He suggested to! his Knopf editor that they ought to get 'a regular Lenox Avenue blues boy' to accompany him at his reading in New York." In the fifties Hughes was a major voice in the movement of recording with jazz accompaniment. Although I have neither the space, incli
------------------------------------------------------------------------ lly and emotionally unequipped to understand. Montage gave us defining metaphors of the black experience--"the dream deferred" and "raisins in the sun." Only Dunbar's "caged bird" mataphor comes close, in terms of popular acceptance, as a cultural image of African American life. As important and innovative as Montage is, most of us are not fully aware of this book-length accomplishment because we have bought into the establishment assessment that Hughes had a limited poetic technique. In a similar way, the establishment assessment assessed Thelonious Monk as having a limited piano techinique. But just as few pianists are able to play like Monk and no musicians have to able to match his compositional authority; similarity, emphasis on Eurocentric poetic devices notwithstanding few poets have been able to write from inside the black experience like Hughes, and no one has achieved as impressive a body of compositions, that is "textual peoms." Lanston Hughes was absolutely clear a! bout the focus of his work and the danger inherent in articulating the history and vision, the realities and aspirations, of the sufferers. An emphasis on dual responsibilites, social literacy, is in itself a particular feature of a black aesthetic. This is not new, or novel, but it does continue to be controversial precisely because it contextualizes art within the world as the world actually is , beset by dominant and dominating forces who enforce (sometimes under the rubric of "free enterprise") all manners of economic exploitation. There is necessarily an opposition to "commercialism" inherent in the black aesthetic precisely because, from an African American perspective, the birth of the black experience, as archetypically illustrated by the Congo Suare experience, was simultaneously the site of both black art as ritual and black art as entertainment, with the entertainment undermining the rutual. Moreover, the birth of the African American was as a chattel slave, as a co! hat is, an articulation of words that have been both sense (meaning) and sound (emotion). Hughes clearly close to emphasize black music, which increasingly meant dealing with improvisation. The improvisation is implied in that certain themes, rhymes and rhythmic patterns, and recurring images ebb and flow throughout Montage- here spelled out in detail, there hinted at, and in another instance turned on their head. The above-quoated letter indicated that Hughes was conscious of what he was doing, and it is this self-consciousness that marks this as a modern poem. Indeed, Montage is almost postmodern in its mosaic of voices and attitude contained in one piece. Just as jazz simultaneously stresses the collective and the individual, Hughes component poems are each individual statements, but they are also part of a larger unit(y). Significantly, Hughes as an individual is de-emphasized in the work, even as various individual members of the community speak and are spoken about. In o! one and timbre; and (3) how to use the vernacle without resorting to dialect. Hughes realized that is was impossible to do what he wanted to do in one piece, so he composed a series of short poems that play effect off eachother. Western literacy thought values the long form, the novel in particular, as a statement of intellectual acheivement and implicity devalues short forms. For this reason a collection of short stories rarely recieves equal critical attention as does a novel by the same autho
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Approximate Word count = 2374
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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