Comparing The Poetry Of Langston Hughes And Countee Cullen

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The Harlem Renaissance brought forth a new type poetry by African Americans about their lives and the injustices they faced in the northern part of the United States. Many poets arose from the Harlem Renaissance, two of these poets being Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. There are tons of different poets, however these two poets, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, remain amongst two of the most important and famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance itself remains one of the most important times in the history of the United States, especially for African Americans living in the United States.. The Harlem Renaissance happened during the 1920s and 1930s. Nonetheless, it started “when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, …show more content…

This was actually his first poem, and was highly praised by critics. The poem is essentially talking about how his people have used rivers from ancient times to present times, and how his people are related to the rivers. “The refrain, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”. links the movement and endurance and power of the great rivers to black history.” (enotes) The emphasis of the world “I,” which is repeated in lines four through seven, is not necessarily just one speaker, but instead black people as a whole. Since the poem, specifically in the parts where he mentions “I,” has various distant locations where generations of his people were usually around. Some proof of this is in line five where he says “I built my hut near the Congo” and in line seven where he states “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans” shows that two dissimilar people from two contrastive time periods are describing an event near a river. These are probably not the same person, despite each sentence starting with “I.” This poem primarily emphasizes the importance of black identity, which is one of the subjects that the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance touched on. Due to the poem talking about his ancient people, you can tell …show more content…

This poem is about an incident of racism that happened to the narrator earlier in his young life. The thing about this poem is that the event that happened in the poem was so random, the narrator was just called a racial slur out of nowhere. In lines one and two, we can see that the narrator is happy strolling around in Baltimore. There is also some alliteration going on in line two, where there is “repeated H sounds in “heart” and “head.”” (Shmoop) And then suddenly in line eight we can see that this happiness was suddenly ruined because another kid that did not appear to be any older than the narrator (at the age of eight) just said a racial slur to the narrator without any reason to do so. This memory in Baltimore has been stuck with the narrator for the rest of his life, as in stanza three the narrator revealed that throughout all seven months in Baltimore, which is kind of a long time, this event was the only thing that he remembered from his trip in Baltimore. This memory probably struck the narrator for a long time because this might have been his first instance of “in-your-face” racism, where it is just blatant racism. This might have been his first instance because in line five it is revealed that he is only eight years of age and very small. A kid this age should not be exposed to these types of words, because as we can see it has stuck with the narrator’s whole life.

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