Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

Langston Hughes “The Negro Speak of Rivers”
I found Langston Hughes poems to be like a journey. The progression through which he explains the lives of African Americans seems simple but his poems seem to have an underlying significance or meaning. I found his poem “The Negro Speaks of River” to be almost omnipresent in relation toward African Americans, it was as if Hughes was the holder of knowledge from his fellow people. This collective “I” and the connection towards rivers makes me think of an aging man who has seen his people throughout their entire existence and it gives it an otherworldly read. I also see the collective “I” in his poem “I, Too” in which, while “I” is being used to present a person, it can also be representing a collective

whole.
Dean Rader shares his opinions and connections in his article “Overview of ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’” in which he discusses the connection with the African American people on a whole, as well as how it was written and its connection to Walt Whitman (Rader). Rader states that Hughes poem is a response to Walt Whitman and that he, Hughes, “invokes the technique and spirit of Whitman” in order to create lyric that has significance publicly and privately. He addresses the first person significance, in that, the poem is not speaking from an autobiographical sense but metaphorically, where the metaphor makes a cultural connection to African-American citizens (Rader). The difference, Rader explains, between Whitman and Hughes work is that Hughes’ “poem rises out of a decidedly African-American concern” and uses strong African or African-American “landscapes” to create his work “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Rader). This shared “cultural memory” serves as a collection of hopes, dreams, struggles and so forth that grows through time, becoming deeper (Rader). Rader explains the performative language used and its similar qualities to gospel song, give the poem both likeness toward pre-literate African culture orality and mirrors the contemporary aspects of African American worship (Rader). Rader concludes that while Hughes poems seem simple, they are “deceptively complex” and they carry the weight of emotions that make his views identifiable by white audiences (Rader).
In Langston Hughes “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” he states that “I’ve known rivers” (Hughes 871).

Already the reader is under the impression that it is not simply that he has known rivers himself but that the entirety of the African American peoples have known rivers. He goes from the Euphrates River to the Congo and ends at the Mississippi River “when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,” demonstrating this huge passage of time where he has become wiser and learned to the point where his “soul has grown deep like the rivers” (Hughes 871). I interpreted this to mean that the passage of time has made the culture and the people of the African American culture to deepen and grow, similar to how rivers widen and carve deeper into the earth as time progresses. He describes his knowing of rivers in a way that transcends time, and this led me to the conclusion that in his eyes, the African American culture has always been; it’s old and weary but vivacious and ever-flowing. I agree with Rader on the collective identity that Hughes uses within the poem, as I have previously stated. The point Rader makes that I identified specifically with is that Hughes writes the African American peoples, like they are the rivers mentioned above, and that they “will persist and endure”

(Rader).
Langston Hughes “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” might seem like a simple poem at first, but upon looking deeper into it, the depth of the poem can be seen. Hughes becomes the holder of the African American peoples past, present, and more through his cultural connection he displays in his work. I enjoyed reading Hughes works, and I even found myself getting into a rhythm while reading them as if on a beat. In conclusion, Langston Hughes’ work not only reassures and connects African Americans with each other and their past, but gives an understanding to the white population at the time.