Langston Hughes (1902–1967)

Theme for English B
The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway. . . .
He did a lazy sway. . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

Motto

I play it cool
I dig all jive
That's the reason
I stay alive
My motto
As I live and learn
Is dig and be dug in return

About the author:
Source: Poetryfoundation.org

Langston Hughes was first recognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known
as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. Du Bose Heyward
wrote in the New York Herald Tribune in 1926: "Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years
old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a
genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting
literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always
intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical
sense, Langston Hughes has given us a 'first book' that marks the opening of a career well worth
watching."

Despite Heyward's statement, much of Hughes's early work was roundly criticized by many black
intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life. In his
autobiographical The Big Sea, Hughes commented: "Fine Clothes to the Jew was well received by the
literary magazines and the white press, but the Negro critics did not like it at all. The Pittsburgh Courier
ran a big headline across the top of the page, LANGSTON HUGHES' BOOK OF POEMS TRASH.
The headline in the New York Amsterdam News was LANGSTON HUGHES—THE SEWER
DWELLER. The Chicago Whip characterized me as 'the poet low-rate of Harlem.' Others called the
book a disgrace to the race, a return to the dialect tradition, and a parading of all our racial defects
before the public. . . . The Negro critics and many of the intellectuals were very sensitive about their
race in books. (And still are.) In anything that white people were likely to read, they wanted to put their
best foot forward, their politely polished and cultural foot—and only that foot."

An example of the type of criticism of which Hughes was writing is Estace Gay's comments on Fine
Clothes to the Jew. "It does not matter to me whether every poem in the book is true to life," Gay
wrote. "Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or
representative of the Negro? Bad enough to have white authors holding up our imperfections to public
gaze. Our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning
and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves." Commenting on
reviewers like Gay, Hughes wrote: "I sympathized deeply with those critics and those intellectuals, and
I saw clearly the need for some of the kinds of books they wanted. But I did not see how they could
expect every Negro author to write such books. Certainly, I personally knew very few people anywhere
who were wholly beautiful and wholly good. Besides I felt that the masses of our people had as much
in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones who had been born with some means
and the ability to work up to a master's degree at a Northern college. Anyway, I didn't know the upper
class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and
they weren't people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of
Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too."

Hoyt W. Fuller commented that Hughes "chose to identify with plain black people—not because it
required less effort and sophistication, but precisely because he saw more truth and profound
significance in doing so. Perhaps in this he was inversely influenced by his father—who, frustrated by
being the object of scorn in his native land, rejected his own people. Perhaps the poet's reaction to his
father's flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace it with extra fervor." (Langston
Hughes's parents separated shortly after his birth and his father moved to Mexico. The elder Hughes
came to feel a deep dislike and revulsion for other American blacks.) In Hughes's own words, his
poetry is about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or

Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow,
working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten,
buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to
get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July."

In fact, the title Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was misunderstood and disliked by many people, was
derived from the Harlemites Hughes saw pawning their own clothing; most of the pawn shops and
other stores in Harlem at that time were owned by Jewish people. Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who
served as Hughes's assistant, believed that Hughes was "critically, the most abused poet in America. . . .
Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and
most black critics only grudgingly admired him. Some, like James Baldwin, were downright malicious
about his poetic achievement. But long after Baldwin and the rest of us are gone, I suspect Hughes'
poetry will be blatantly around growing in stature until it is recognized for its genius. Hughes' tragedy
was double-edged: he was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was demode, and he didn't go
much beyond one of his earliest themes, black is beautiful. He had the wit and intelligence to explore
the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always
accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did
for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll."

Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of
black life and its frustrations. Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was
the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason
he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people.
A reviewer for Black World noted in 1970: "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of
writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston
Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black people. The poet occupies such a position
in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that 'we possess within ourselves a great
reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,' and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the
people. He used his poetry and prose to illustrate that 'there is no lack within the Negro people of
beauty, strength and power,' and he chose to do so on their own level, on their own terms."

Hughes brought a varied and colorful background to his writing. Before he was twelve years old he had
lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck
farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited
Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy. As David Littlejohn
observed in his Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes: "On the whole,
Hughes' creative life [was] as full, as varied, and as original as Picasso's, a joyful, honest monument of
a career. There [was] no noticeable sham in it, no pretension, no self-deceit; but a great, great deal of
delight and smiling irresistible wit. If he seems for the moment upstaged by angrier men, by more
complex artists, if 'different views engage' us, necessarily, at this trying stage of the race war, he may
well outlive them all, and still be there when it's over. . . . Hughes' [greatness] seems to derive from his
anonymous unity with his people. He seems to speak for millions, which is a tricky thing to do."

Hughes reached many people through his popular fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (shortened to
Simple). Simple is a poor man who lives in Harlem, a kind of comic no-good, a stereotype Hughes
turned to advantage. He tells his stories to Boyd, the foil in the stories who is a writer much like
Hughes, in return for a drink. His tales of his troubles with work, women, money, and life in general
often reveal, through their very simplicity, the problems of being a poor black man in a racist society.
"White folks," Simple once commented, "is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life." Simple's

musings first appeared in 1942 in "From Here to Yonder," a column Hughes wrote for the Chicago
Defender and later for the New York Post. According to a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews, their original
intent was "to convince black Americans to support the U.S. war effort." They were later published in
several volumes.

A more recent collection, 1994's The Return of Simple, contains previously unpublished material but
remains current in its themes, according to a Publishers Weekly critic who noted Simple's addressing of
such issues as political correctness, children's rights, and the racist undercurrent behind contraception
and sterilization proposals. Donald C. Dickinson wrote in his Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes
that the "charm of Simple lies in his uninhibited pursuit of those two universal goals, understanding and
security. As with most other humans, he usually fails to achieve either of these goals and sometimes
once achieved they disappoint him. . . . Simple has a tough resilience, however, that won't allow him to
brood over a failure very long. . . . Simple is a well-developed character, both believable and lovable.
The situations he meets and discusses are so true to life everyone may enter the fun. This does not
mean that Simple is in any way dull. He injects the ordinary with his own special insights. . . . Simple is
a natural, unsophisticated man who never abandons his hope in tomorrow." A reviewer for Black World
commented on the popularity of Simple: "The people responded. Simple lived in a world they knew,
suffered their pangs, experienced their joys, reasoned in their way, talked their talk, dreamed their
dreams, laughed their laughs, voiced their fears—and all the while underneath, he affirmed the wisdom
which anchored at the base of their lives. It was not that ideas and events and places and people beyond
the limits of Harlem—all of the Harlems—did not concern him; these things, indeed, were a part of his
consciousness; but Simple's rock-solid commonsense enabled him to deal with them with balance and
intelligence. . . . Simple knows who he is and what he is, and he knows that the status of expatriate
offers no solution, no balm. The struggle is here, and it can only be won here, and no constructive end
is served through fantasies and illusions and false efforts at disguising a basic sense of inadequacy.
Simple also knows that the strength, the tenacity, the commitment which are necessary to win the
struggle also exist within the Black community." Hoyt W. Fuller believed that, like Simple, "the key to
Langston Hughes . . . was the poet's deceptive and profound simplicity. Profound because it was both
willed and ineffable, because some intuitive sense even at the beginning of his adulthood taught him
that humanity was of the essence and that it existed undiminished in all shapes, sizes, colors and
conditions. Violations of that humanity offended his unshakable conviction that mankind is possessed
of the divinity of God."

It was Hughes's belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with
understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of
his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that "most people
are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been." Reviewing The Panther and
the Lash: Poems of Our Times in Poetry, Laurence Lieberman recognized that Hughes's "sensibility
[had] kept pace with the times," but he criticized his lack of a personal political stance. "Regrettably, in
different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race," Lieberman
commented. "A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile
—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are
tempted to ask, what are Hughes' politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual
commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than
aesthetic, must take sides politically."

Despite some recent criticism, Hughes's position in the American literary scene seems to be secure.
David Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is "the one sure Negro classic, more certain of permanence than
even Baldwin or Ellison or Wright. . . . His voice is as sure, his manner as original, his position as

secure as, say Edwin Arlington Robinson's or Robinson Jeffers'. . . . By molding his verse always on
the sounds of Negro talk, the rhythms of Negro music, by retaining his own keen honesty and
directness, his poetic sense and ironic intelligence, he maintained through four decades a readable
newness distinctly his own."

The Block and The Sweet and Sour Animal Book are posthumously published collections of Hughes's
poetry for children that position his words against a backdrop of visual art. The Block pairs Hughes's
poems with a series of six collages by Romare Bearden that bears the book's title. The Sweet and Sour
Animal Book contains previously unpublished and repeatedly rejected poetry of Hughes from the
1930s. Here, the editors have combined it with the artwork of elementary school children at the Harlem
School of the Arts. The results, noted Veronica Chambers in the New York Times Book Review,
"reflect Hughes's childlike wonder as well as his sense of humor." Chambers also commented on the
rhythms of Hughes's words, noting that "children love a good rhyme" and that Hughes gave them "just
a simple but seductive taste of the blues." Hughes's poems have been translated into German, French,
Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music.

Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays that
Hughes "has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes
differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who
followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During
the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an
ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes
and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He has been, unlike most nonblack
poets other than Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg, a poet of the people. . . . Until the
time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences
throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American
poet."