The Work of Langston Hughes Essay example -- Poetry Langston Hughes Au

The Work of Langston HughesLangston Hughes is considered by mevery readers to be the or so significant benighted poet of the twentieth century. He is described as ...the honey author of poems steeped in the richness of African American culture, poems that exude Hughess affection for black Americans across all divisions of region, class, and gender. (Rampersad 3) His writing was both demoralise and uplifting at snips. His poetry, spanning five decades from 1926 to 1967, reflected the changing black experience in America, from the Harlem Renaissance to the turbulent sixties. At the beginning of his calling, he was surrounded by the Harlem Renaissance. New York City in the 1920s was a place of wide growth and richness in African-American culture and art. For Hughes, this was the perfect opportunity to establish his poems. His early work reflects the happy times of the era. However, as time progressed he became increasingly bitter and upset over race relations. shut out for a fe w examples, all his poems from this later period spoke close social injustice in America. The somber character of his writing oft reflected his mood. Race relations was the shadow of his career, following him from his first poem to his last. The tone and subject matter of Hughess poetry can be connect to certain points in history, and his life. The youth of Hughes is brought out by his poem Harlem shadow Club, a piece which describes living in the moment. Often children do not consider the consequences of their actions they act on instinct and desire. Hughes might invite been 27 when he wrote this poem, but the feisty, upbeat tempo of a give instruction boy is present in his style. Harlem Night Club is unique in that it describes the integration of blacks and whites in an optimistic tone. The vigor and spirit of his youth is reflected in the energy of the writing, Jazz-band, jazz-band, / Play, plAY, PLAY / Tomorrow....who knows? / Dance today The repetition of the words, and the increasing stress on the word play bring out the excitement to the reader. more than evidence of Hughess youth comes from the very focus of the poem the sundry(a) couples. The entire poem can be summed up as ...a single-glance tableau of interracial flirtation against a background of heady jazz. (Emanuel 120) This festive blood between the two sexes can rarely be seen in any of Hughess later poems. At th... ... civil rights movement had peaked, Hughes is left whimsy worthless. The bitterness he faced during his lifetime built up to a dull apathy that appears in this piece. Despite the fact that Hughes is ...among the most silver American poets to have sung about the wounds caused by injustice (Rampersad 3), he thought his poems made no impact on society. On the contrary, Hughess poems had a tremendous influence on African-American society. Although scholars and critics throughout his career dismissed his poetry as too simple and unlearned, his primary audience, the black masses, and even Hughes himself viewed his work as folk poetry which was beneath criticism. (Rampersad 4-5) His poems, when analyse as a collection over the span of his life, clearly test how the tone and emphasis in the writing reflect the mood of Hughes himself as he grew old. The universal theme of racism and race relations delineate all the important work of Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes Danny Belinkie December 23, 1999 Period 2 industrial plant Cited Emanuel, James. Langston Hughes. Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1967. Arnold Rampersad. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Classics, New York, 1994.