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| Transcript of a video presentation by David Kresh When the Langston Hughes Reader was published in 1958, the publisher felt able to call Hughes "the unchallenged spokesman of the American Negro." That Hughes was unchallenged in the role of spokesman may itself have been open to challenge--after all, Martin Luther King Jr. had already, the year before, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and delivered his first major address at the Lincoln Memorial--but Hughes's importance was and remains beyond question. Why was this? Let's look at a poem:
This is, in part, a spokesman's poem, an assertion of a claim. The poem conveys a note of threat, as the speaker grows strong so that tomorrow "nobody'll dare." But it has many other notes, too: sensuality, intimacy, humor, self-confidence, and individual personality--it sounds like Langston Hughes. Hughes was more than a spokesman, and he was more than a poet. Only about 80 of the 500 pages of the Langston Hughes Reader contain poetry. The cover of the book lists the other categories included: novels, stories, plays, autobiographies, songs, blues, articles, speeches, and a pageant called "The Glory of Negro History." Part of Hughes's importance was that, however much he may have wished to speak for the Negro, he was equally interested in speaking to the Negro. One of the principal means was in the series of stories he began publishing in the 1940s in his weekly column in the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper, stories dealing with the adventures and observations of Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple, a citizen of Harlem with a lot on his mind. In 1950, the first collection of these stories in book form, Simple Speaks His Mind, appeared. More collections and even a Broadway musical, Simply Heavenly, followed. Many people met Simple before they ever read a poem by Hughes. The continuing interest of the Simple stories is shown by the fact that, if you turn on the local jazz radio station here in Washington on a Saturday around noon, you're likely to hear the host of the blues show reading one of the Simple stories to his audience. Hughes was everywhere, figuratively and literally. He visited every continent except Australia and Antarctica. An example of his wide range is a small book, published in Moscow in 1934, called A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia. Hughes held no regular teaching position or other day job. He supported himself as a writer , and he wrote everything there was to write. Look at some of his output in the dozen years leading up to the Langston Hughes Reader: In 1947, Hughes wrote the lyrics for the Broadway opera Street Scene, with libretto by Elmer Rice and music by Kurt Weill; and he translated a novel by Haitian poet and novelist Jacques Roumain; and published a book of his own poems, Fields of Wonder. In 1948 came a collection of translations of Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen. In 1949, Hughes was co-editor with Arna Bontemps of The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949, including some of Hughes's translations as well as his own poems. In its expanded 1970 version, this anthology is still useful, and has a place in the Library's Main Reading Room reference collection. Also in 1949 came a book of his own poems, One Way Ticket, with illustrations by Jacob Lawrence; and an opera, Troubled Island, with words by Hughes and Verna Arvey and music by William Grant Still. In 1950, Simple Speaks His Mind, the first collection of the Simple stories. In 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred, a high point in his own poetry. In 1952, a collection of stories, Laughing to Keep from Crying; and a children's book, The First Book of Negroes. In 1953, another collection of Simple stories. In 1954, another couple of children's books; and an album on the Folkways label introducing children to jazz. In 1955, more children's books; and The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a wonderful collection of photographs of Harlem life by Roy DeCarava with text by Hughes. In 1956, a volume of autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander; and a Pictorial History of the Negro in America. In 1957, another Simple book; the musical Simply Heavenly; and a collection of translations of Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. In 1958, The Book of Negro Folklore, edited with Arna Bontemps; a novel, Tambourines to Glory; and a recording of his own poems accompanied by jazz musicians. And even that list leaves a few things out. In 1925, Hughes was bussing tables in a Washington, D.C., hotel, and he slipped a few poems to the famous poet Vachel Lindsay, who was visiting the hotel. The next day, newspapers announced Lindsay's discovery of a new poet. "The Weary Blues" was one of these poems, and it became the title poem of Hughes's first book the following year.
Think of it. Here was a young man in his early twenties. Here was a musical form that hadn't been around much longer than he had. W. C. Handy first heard the blues in 1903, the year after Hughes was born. Bessie Smith, the Empress of the Blues, made her first recording in 1923. And Hughes was able to create this wonderful poem. Although he's writing about the blues, he reserves his use of the classic 3-line blues stanza ("I got the Weary Blues / And I can't be satisfied") almost until the end of the poem, and leads up to it with a skillful variety of structures: rhymed couplets in four-beat lines, interspersed 3-beat lines recalling the ballad stanza, interpolated cries ("O Blues!"), 2/3 of a classic blues stanza, then the thing itself, followed by a rhymed couplet and a rhymed triplet to end the poem. And look at the syncopated handling of rhythm: you have to be alert to read a couplet like "Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool / He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool / Sweet blues!" And what is this drowsy, dreamlike scene, which connects at the end to the night sky, sleep, rock, and death? And who is the "I" who observes the scene? Not for nothing did Hughes proclaim his kinship with the great father of American poetry, Walt Whitman. Montage of a Dream Deferred in 1951 was a book-length suite of related poems presenting a panorama of Harlem life, using the sounds and methods of contemporary African-American music and a group of repeating motifs, and displaying the many tones Hughes was master of. From the opening section, "Boogie Segue to Bop," here's the first poem, "Dream Boogie."
From the "Lenox Avenue Mural" section, the poem called "Harlem":
And the final poem in the book, called "Island," ending with the two lines that opened the book many pages earlier:
These are spokesman poems, but just before that final "Island," at the climax of his suite, Hughes turns aside for a moment and lets an ordinary Harlemite, maybe a younger version of Jesse B. Semple, be heard in this poem called "Letter":
Along the way to those final poems, there are many quick and longer sketches of Harlem, including "Dead in There":
There is the famous Hughes "Motto":
And there are a couple of what, for us New Yorkers, pass as nature poems. This one is "Dive":
And this one is "Wonder":
And now, here's Langston Hughes.
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