| Subject Areas |
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History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - African-American |
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Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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Biography |
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Poetry |
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| Time Required |
| | Approximately one class period each for Lessons
1-6 |
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| Skills |
| | reading literary texts
critical analysis
understanding poetry
interpretation
drawing inferences and comparisons
journal writing
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| Additional Data |
| | Date Created: 07/01/02 |
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| Date Posted |
| | 4/1/2002 |
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The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You
e IntroductionWhen
the Academy of American
Poets, an EDSITEment-reviewed website, asked the public to vote on their favorite
American poet, the verdict was decisive: Langston Hughes. The Academy then sent
a petition to the U.S. Postal service urging the adoption of a stamp commemorating
this most popular of American poets, and on February 1 (the poet's birthday),
2002, the U.S. Postal Service did just that, issuing the stamp pictured in the
left-hand corner above.
Poets achieve this kind of popular acclaim only when
they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and
memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities
have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?
Helping students to answer this question is the primary purpose of this lesson.
Five journal entries and accompanying class discussions guide students
in developing a general definition of voice in poetry, and in analyzing
and appreciating the poetic voice of Langston Hughes in particular. These writing
and discussion activities culminate in a writing assignment (Lesson
7, below), in which students either write a poem expressing their own voice
(as developed in their journals), or write about one of the qualities of Langston
Hughes's poetic voice (as explored in class discussion). Guiding
Question: What qualities make a writer's voice
forceful, distinctive, and memorable? Learning ObjectivesBy
completing the activities in this lesson, students will - Develop
a definition of what is meant by voice in poetry
- Learn about the qualities that make Langston
Hughes's voice distinctive, forceful, and memorable
- Write journal entries to develop their own voices
as writers
- Learn how images convey strong
emotions in poetry
- Learn how poetry gives
shape, direction, and meaning to strong emotions.
Preparing
to Teach This LessonBefore
teaching this lesson, read through the poems and accompanying exercises below.
The five journal entries give students practice in expressing their own
voice by asking them to respond to five questions:1.
What do you see?
2. Who are you?
3. Where do you come from?
4. What
obstacles have you overcome in life?
5. What do you feel strongly about?
Each journal exercise is accompanied by the reading
and discussion of one poem by Langston Hughes. Although Lessons 2 through 6 are
designed to be presented as a sequence, beginning with a definition exercise (Lesson
1) and culminating in a final writing assignment (Lesson
7), each of them can also be adapted as a stand-alone lesson for a single
class period.
You can find biographical
background in the special feature
on Langston Hughes created by the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets; additional biographical
as well as critical materials on Hughes are available from the EDSITEment-reviewed
Modern American Poetry.
The special feature on Hughes from the Academy also contains links to more detailed
treatments of Hughes and his career, such as the extensive biography
of Langston Hughes created by the Gale Group. Suggested Activities1:
Defining Voice
2:
Variations on a Dream
3:
"Theme for English B"
4:
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
5:
"Mother to Son"
6:
"Merry-Go-Round"
7:
Final Writing Assignment
Extending
the Lesson
1. Defining Voice.
On
the board, write a working definition of voice that is appropriate for
your students' level of preparation and that reflects what they already know.
The simplest definition is that a writer's voice reveals his or her personality.
A strong contrast might help to make the point: read a passage from an encyclopedia
(or perhaps your tax form) and read a passage from one of the poems by Langston
Hughes, below.
As you and your students work through the activities of
this lesson, create a list, just below the working definition of voice that you
wrote on the board earlier, consisting of additional items and qualities that
contribute to a distinctive poetic voice. Use the guiding
question (above) to help your students make choices about which qualities
might belong in a more comprehensive definition of poetic voice. For now it is
enough just to list the possibilities; as a culminating activity, students will
develop a revised definition of poetic voice that incorporates the discoveries
your class made while reading the poetry of Langston Hughes.(Lesson
7).
Here is a little more background
on the subject of voice. Unlike, say, iambic pentameter, which has a fairly constrained
meaning, voice has been extended metaphorically far beyond its original sense
of the vocal qualities of a particular speaker. According to one dictionary of
critical terms, to speak of voice in a poem is to
...characterize
the tonal qualities, attitudes, or even the entire personality of this speaker
as it reveals itself directly or indirectly (through sound, choice of diction,
and other stylistic devices)…[voice] reminds us that a human being is behind the
words of a poem, that he is revealing his individuality by means of the poem,
and that this revelation may be the most significant part of what we receive from
the poem.
--Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Ed. Alex
Preminger. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.
While
you will not want to begin with the definition above, you may find that, having
worked through the activities below, your students will be able to come up with
an essentially equivalent formulation, for by this stage they will have learned
to identify a wide variety of qualities in Hughes's poetry that have made his
voice a forceful, distinctive, and memorable one for so many readers.
2. Variations on a Dream
What
do you see?(What do you tend to notice in others and in the world around you?
What do you tend to remember? When you think of the past, what images stay with
you?)
Pass out copies of these three
poems by Langston Hughes to your students
1. "Dreams": The text as well
as an audio/video version of "Dreams"
is available on Favorite Poem
Project, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets and the Internet Public Library.
2. "Harlem (2)" ( "Dream Deferred"): Although not available on an EDSITEment-reviewed
source, this short poem is widely anthologized; you can find a copy on the Internet
by doing a search for the words of the title plus "Langston Hughes" (or do a search
for the first line "What happens to a dream deferred?").
3. "Dream Variations":
the text of "Dream Variations"
is available at the Academy of American
Poets.
Ask students to take notes on any interesting images they notice
as the poems are read. Then read all of the poems aloud. Before discussing them,
give your students some silent time to read through the poems again on their own,
making notes on any interesting images they find in each poem. As a class, discuss
the imagery and the emotions expressed in each poem. You might wish to take each
of the poems in turn, for each has something new to reveal about how vivid images
may be yoked with strong emotions to create memorable poetry.
With the
first poem, for example, you could begin by having students identify the poem's
two most prominent images: the broken-winged bird and the barren field. Then have
students brainstorm all the feelings they associate with these images (for now,
just "free associate" and do not censor any possibilities). Discuss how these
feelings are linked with the concept and word to which the two images are metaphorically
linked: "life." One of the reasons for Hughes's broad appeal is his ability to
pack a great deal of meaning in a small space by creating metaphors linking images
that suggest a range of widely shared feelings with general concepts such as "life"
that might otherwise strike us as vague or abstract. The result is a general idea
we can all grasp enlivened by vivid images whose associations we can all share.
You can apply the same approach to your discussion of "Dream Deferred," which
links images that elicit feelings of strong physical revulsion (the festering,
running sore, for instance) to an otherwise hazy and ephemeral idea (a "dream").
Notice that this poem does not tell you what a "dream deferred" is or what it
must become; Hughes merely poses the question, leaves the answer open, although
he does so with the unforgettable force that has made his poetic voice so distinctive
and memorable.
For journal
entry #1, students will respond to the question:
What do you see? (What do you tend to notice in others and in the world around
you? What do you tend to remember? When you think of the past, what images stay
with you?)
All of us notice different sorts of things in the world
around us. Some people are quick to notice the clothes others wear and to remember
the details for days; other people do not notice and would not remember such details
to save their lives. What we see and hear and touch and smell around us--the sensual
"pictures" that remain in our memories--are for poets and writers the raw stuff
of memorable images and metaphors.
This journal assignment
has two parts. First, students should write about a memorable event that happened
more than one year ago. In their journal entries, they should emphasize two things:
1) as many physical details they can remember--clothes people wore, the weather,
sounds, etc.; 2) their feelings at the time, their emotional responses to the
remembered event.
Next, ask students to take an analytical step back from
their writing and try to come up with one or two metaphors that might make this
event memorable to readers. The metaphors should match one or more details with
one or more of the feelings they experienced at the time.
Ask students
to share one of their metaphors with the rest of class and, if it's necessary
for understanding the metaphor, ask them to briefly summarize their memorable
event. (This discussion of emotion and metaphor will be picked up in subsequent
discussions in the activities below.)
Return
briefly to your working definition of voice in poetry. Review the guiding
question (above). In your class discussions of imagery, metaphor, and emotion,
or in your students' journal exercises, has anyone discovered any qualities that
help to make a poet's voice forceful, distinctive, and memorable? Make a list
on the board below your original working definition.
Before
moving on to additional poems, you may wish to share with your students Winhold
Reiss's portrait of Langston Hughes as a young man; you can find this portrait
by doing a search on the EDSITEment-reviewed National
Portrait Gallery website. What qualities in the young Hughes has this painter
tried to capture? Do these qualities fit with those reflected in the voice that
you heard in the three "Dream" poems? 3.
“Theme for English B"”
Who are you? (How do others see
you? How do you see yourself? How would you like others to see you?) - Before
reading and discussing the poem, ask your students to warm up their minds with
journal entry #2. The question is essentially the same one that Hughes
describes in his poem, "Theme
for English B": say something about yourself; answer the deceptively simple
question, who are you?. Reassure students that you know this is an extremely
open-ended question. If you like, you can qualify this question a bit: How
do others see you? How do you see yourself? How would you like others to see you?
But the open-endedness of the question is part of the point here, for the purpose
of this exercise is to parallel the situation described at the beginning of Hughes's
poem, "Theme for English B."
- Now
share with your students a copy of "Theme
for English B," available from the Academy
of American Poets. Give them time to read the poem to themselves before reading
the poem aloud in class--they will easily recognize the parallel with the journal
exercise they have just completed. After reading the poem aloud, ask students
to identify which section of the poem is part of the "page" that Hughes writes
for his instructor, and which section represents the thoughts in his mind just
before he begins to write. What are the differences between that first stanza,
representing the poet's thoughts to himself as he contemplates the assignment,
and the subsequent stanzas, which express how he presents himself to an
audience, in this case his instructor? List some of things that Hughes includes
in his self-presentation.
The poem is straightforward and speaks for itself,
but reveals a more subtle and sly speaker the more you reread it and think about
how Hughes has turned the instructor's question on its head. What does he mean
when he says, "I hear you: / hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this
page"? Who is "talking" here? How can Hughes say to his instructor that they are
a part of each other? Do we as readers have a part in this conversation?
- Your students should readily identify the
central theme of this poem: the role that race plays in self-identity and in our
relations with others. In Hughes's poem, the relationship of "you" and "me" is
charged with race. The speaker in the poem is black, the instructor is white.
But think about Hughes's relationship with that unseen audience: readers of his
poem. The reader of Hughes's poem may, of course, be of any race, so the relationship
between poet and reader--between "me" and "you"--is always shifting with each
new reader. Ask your students about their own relationship as readers to Hughes's
poem. How does their own race matter in how they read this poem? Do they think
it matters at all? Do they think these shifting relationships between reader and
poet, between "you" and "me," are intentional? Is this perhaps part of the meaning
that Hughes intends?
- What new lesson
does this poem have to teach us about the poet's voice? Ask students if Hughes's
"Theme for English B" gives them any ideas about how they might add to or modify
your working definition of voice in poetry. For example, Hughes says that
"I guess I'm what / I feel and see and hear": a poet's voice, then, includes aspects
of his or her everyday experience; he also says that he "hears" Harlem and New
York, indicating that the places where a poet lives or has lived become of who
he or she is, part of what makes his or her voice a distinctive one.
- This
may be a good time to share with your students a little background on Hughes and
on the Harlem Renaissance. There is a student-oriented biography of the poet available
at America's
Story, from the EDSITEment-reviewed American
Memory collection. For additional background, see Preparing
to Teach this Lesson, above. On the Harlem Rennaissance, see the EDSITEment-reviewed
online exhibit, Harlem 1900-1940:
An African-American Community.
4.
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
Where do you come from? - Along
with "Mother to Son" and "A Dream Deferred," Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
is among his most-frequently anthologized and taught poems. Also his first published
poem, it is a small masterpiece of rhythm (another quality you will want to add
to your working definition of voice). The best way to appreciate the rhythm
of the poem is to hear it read by Hughes himself. If you have access to RealPlayer
on the computer, you and your students can listen to the poet reading "The
Negro Speaks of Rivers"; both the text and of the poem and the audio clip
are available on the EDSITEment resource Academy
of American Poets. (There is also a wonderful recording of Hughes reading
this and other poems on the cd/book collection, Poetry Speaks. Ed. Elise
Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby. Narrated by Charles Osgood. Source books Mediafusion,
2001.)
- Begin by talking about the
rhythm of this poem. What words and phrases are repeated? What phrases use different
words but repeat the same grammatical or syntactical pattern? Ask students to
think about why a poet would repeat words and phrases in this way: why not just
say something once and be done with it? (Students will find this easier to answer
if they have heard Langston Hughes reading his poetry.)
-
Discuss the perspective of the speaker in the poem. The previous poem we looked
at, "Theme for English B," spoke to us as one person, a very specific person at
a very specific time--how is "The
Negro Speaks of Rivers" different? Does he seem to be speaking as one person
or as many? How can you tell? If he is speaking for many people, why would he
choose to say "I" instead of "we"? What themes connect the two poems? (A hint:
in "Theme for English B," Hughes says, "Harlem, I hear you"). How can you tell
that, different as they are, the two poems are expressions of the same distinctive
and memorable poetic voice? Go back to some of the "Dream" poems you read earlier.
Where do they fit in this pattern: are they words spoken by a single person or
are they spoken by many people? Is it possible speak for both at the same time?
- For journal entry #3, ask
students to write in their journals a response to the question "where do you
come from?" One approach would be to write from the perspective of a group
of their ancestors; if their family came from Ireland, for instance, they could
speak from the perspective of people who have left their home and sailed across
the Atlantic for America. What do they find in this new world? What have they
left behind? They can use Hughes's poem as a model of a voice which, while personal
and written from the first-person perspective (he uses "I," not "we"), seems to
speak for many people.
- You may wish
to extend this portion of the lesson by sharing with your students Langston Hughes's
interest in and debt to jazz and blues music. For more resources, see Extending
the Lesson, below.
- At the EDSITEment-reviewed
Modern American Poetry,
you can find a sampling of critical
commentary on the poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"; the excerpts here demonstrate
the wide range of meanings that readers have found in Hughes's first published
poem. The point in sharing these comments by critics is not so much to uncover
the "deep meaning" of the poem, but to ask the question: what qualities in this
poem, in the voice that we hear in this poem, have encouraged readers to look
for and find so much meaning in so few lines? Add these qualities to your list
of qualities that make a voice distinctive and memorable.
5.
“Mother to Son”
What obstacles have you overcome in life?
- Share
with your students the text of "Mother
to Son," available from the Favorite
Poem Project, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets as well as the Internet Public
Library. Accompanying the text are several letters by readers testifying to
the ways that this poem speaks to their own struggles; you might wish to pass
out copies of these letters (or direct students to the webpage) before they write
about their own experience in the journal exercise described below.
- As
you begin your discussion of the poem, remind students of your earlier discussion
of imagery and metaphor in the three "Dream" poems. The first poem they looked
at compared life to a barren field and a bird with a broken wing. This poem tells
us what life is not--it is not a "crystal stair." Let's think about this image
a moment. Is this likely one of the things that Hughes saw on a daily basis? Do
most people have a crystal stair in their house? Now we know what life is not--what
then does the poem tell us that it is? Unlike the first poem we read, "Dream,"
this poem gives us not one or two images, but a whole set of related images for
"life." How are they related? What feelings do students associate with these images?
What emotions color the mother's speech to her son? What feelings are conveyed
in the contrast between the crystal stair and the set of other images that, as
the mother tell us, really characterize life? As you discuss the poem, record
any additional items on the board for your definition of voice in poetry.
- You may wish to make the distinction
between voice and speaker (or "persona"). Compare the speaker in this poem to
that in "Theme for English
B" and "The Negro
Speaks of Rivers." In the first, the speaker seems to be the poet himself,
in the second, speaker seems to be a whole people, or perhaps a whole people as
they dwell inside a single man. Here the speaker, or persona, is a literary character--obviously
not Hughes himself. How does Hughes create a voice for this character, the "Mother"
of the title? In terms of words or phrases, how does the poem reflect the speech
of this character? Do you think the mother in the title is necessarily Hughes's
mother, or someone else's mother, or perhaps even more than one mother?
- For
journal entry #4, ask students to respond to the question What obstacles
have you overcome in life? What struggles have you faced? As they write about
these obstacles, they can also give some thought to what they have learned from
their struggles.
- As a class, discuss
how the difficulties and struggles we face in life can help to shape who we are
and how we look at the world. Does anyone have an example of how their perspective
was shaped by their struggles? Now return to the poem. Do the mother's words suggest
that her perspective on trouble and struggle may differ from her son's? What lines
suggest that her own perspective has been directly altered by struggle?
6.
"Merry-Go-Round"
What do you feel strongly about?
- We
are taught that anger is a bad thing, and certainly there are times when anger
is inappropriate. But there are a few things about which we should be angry.
Langston Hughes was angry about the racism of his time, institutionalized in the
notorious Jim Crow laws that are the subject of his poem, "Merry-Go-Round."
Share with your students the text of this poem, available together with an audio/video
version of the poem read aloud, on the Favorite
Poem Project.
- For background
material on the Jim Crow laws, see the Library of Congress online exhibit, African
American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship; given its relevance to the
time period in which Hughes was writing, see especially the section, Depression,
New Deal, and World War II.
- With
the guiding question (above) as your focus, discuss the speaker/persona that Hughes
develops in this poem; compare the speaker that Hughes develops in this poem,
and compare it to the previous poem, "Mother to Son."
- In
journal entry #5, students respond to the question, What do you feel
strongly about? After they have completed this exercise, discuss the uses
and abuses of strong feelings. If they were angry, how did students respond? What
actions did they take? For the question is always: what shall we do with our anger?
Where shall we channel our strongest emotions? What does this poem tell us? (If
students are having difficulty, you might want to remind them of "Theme for English
B." In that poem, the speaker turns a class assignment on its head, redirecting
the question back to the instructor: what of me is part of you? There is
a similar intellectual maneuver in "Merry-Go-Around": instead of directly protesting
the laws that say black people should ride in the back of trains (a serious matter),
Hughes chooses to write about a merry-go-round—which has no back. Why does he
make this choice? Notice also that this poem, like "Dream Deferred" and "Theme
for English B" poses a question, but does give any definitive answers.
7.
Final Writing Assignment
There are several possibilities for
a culminating writing assignment related to Langston Hughes: - Write
a short poem that expresses your personal voice. The poem can build upon
ideas, images, and themes you explored in your journal, and you can use one or
more of Hughes's poems as a model. When you have completed the poem, write out
a definition of voice that uses some of the qualities of voice you discussed
in class. Be prepared to talk in class about the ways in which your poem expresses
qualities of your own voice as a writer.
- Write
a persuasive essay that includes, perhaps in its introductory paragraph, a short
definition of voice in poetry. Write this definition as a statement responding
to the guiding question: What qualities make a writer's voice forceful, distinctive,
and memorable? Now use this definition as the main point in a persuasive
essay about the poetry of Langston Hughes. Use examples from Langston Hughes's
poetry to illustrate and support the qualities that you believe create a voice
that is forceful, distinctive, and memorable.
Extending
the Lesson
- You and your students
may also wish to explore Hughes's response to jazz and blues music. "Hughes said
that jazz and blues expressed the wide range of black America's experience, from
grief and sadness to hope and determination": this quote comes from the student-oriented
biography of Hughes available from America's
Story (a student-oriented feature on the EDSITEment-reviewed American
Memory collection), which introduces students to Hughes's interest in jazz
and blues, including, for example, his 1958 collaboration with the Henry "Red"
Allen Band in a recording of his poetry. For an EDSITEment lesson plan that will
connect you to a wealth of resources related to blues music as well as the African
American experience, see "Learning
the Blues." There is also a broad summary of EDSITEment materials related
to Jazz in the Spotlight
for April, 2002.
The influence of jazz and blues was pervasive in Hughes's
first two books, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew
(1927), and is apparent in the poem, "The
Weary Blues," available on Academy
of American Poets; there is also an online version of "The
Weary Blues" at the University of Toronto electronic collection, a link from
the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library.
Selected EDSITEment Websites
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