WEBVTT

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- Hi, I'm John Green.

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This is Crash Course Literature,

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and today we're gonna discuss
the poetry of Langston Hughes.

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So, the Harlem Renaissance

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was an early 20th-century movement

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in which writers and artists of color

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explored what it means to be an artist,

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what it means to be black,

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and what it means to be an American,

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and also what it means to be

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all three of those
things at the same time.

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Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

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Does the Harlem Renaissance
have anything to do

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with that Renaissance with
like Leonardo da Vinci

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and all of the other Ninja Turtles?

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Kind of, but the Harlem
Renaissance happened

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a lot later than the European Renaissance,

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also on a different continent,

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and there was much less
plague and much more jazz.

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(upbeat music)

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Okay, so one journalist

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described the Harlem Renaissance this way:

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"What a crowd!

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"All classes and colors met face to face,

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"ultra aristocrats, bourgeois, communists,

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"park avenue galore, bookers, publishers,

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"Broadway celebs, and Harlemites

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"giving each other the once over."

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What's the once over?

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Is that a dirty thing, Stan?

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Apparently it is not a dirty thing.

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The Harlem Renaissance began
just after the First World War

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and lasted into the early
years of the Great Depression

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because it turns out,

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it's pretty hard to have a renaissance

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when no one has any money
as they found out in Venice.

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And like the European Renaissance,

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it was a social and political movement,

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but also an artistic one.

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I mean, it inspired literature and poetry,

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music, drama, ethnography,

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publishing, dance, fashion,

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probably even some novelty cocktails.

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As Langston Hughes wrote about this time,

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"The negro was in vogue."

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Oh, it must be time for the open letter.

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Oh look, it's a floating dictionary,

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An open letter to language.

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Hey there, language, how's it going?

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Don't say it's going good, language.

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Say it's going well.

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So, Langston Hughes
often used the term negro

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to refer to African Americans,

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and when we quote him or his poetry,

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we're also going to use that term,

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but we won't use it when I'm
talking about African Americans

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or the African-American experience

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because these days,

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we understand that term to be offensive.

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I would argue this is a
good thing about language.

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It has the opportunity to evolve

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and to become more inclusive.

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In short, language, I love you,

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and I'm amazed by you every day.

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Sorry if that sounds creepy.

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I feel like I might start singing

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the song from The Bodyguard,

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so I'm just gonna stop right now.

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Best wishes, John Green.

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Right, so the poems, essays, and novels

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of the Harlem Renaissance often discuss

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the so-called double consciousness

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of the African-American experience,

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a term coined by W.E.B. Du Bois

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in his book The Souls of Black Folk

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and which you might remember

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from our To Kill A Mockingbird episode.

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Some writers like Countee
Cullen and Claude McKay

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used poetic forms historically associated

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with European white people
like the Shakespearean sonnet,

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the Petrarchan sonnet, and the villanelle,

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which is like a very fancy sonnet.

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But other writers,
including Langston Hughes,

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chose forms based on African

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and African-American folk forms,

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you know, fables and spirituals,

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children's rhymes and blues songs.

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This is actually part
of modernism generally

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as artists sought to
mix high and low culture

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in an attempt to reinvent art.

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Like see also Marcel
Duchamp putting a toilet

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in an art gallery.

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I should clarify

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there were already
toilets in art galleries.

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He was putting it there as art.

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Anyway, let's go to the thought bubble

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for some background on Langston Hughes.

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Hughes was born in 1902 in Missouri

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to mixed-race parents who divorced early.

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He grew up in Kansas

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and began to write poetry in high school

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mostly because white students
chose him as class poet.

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In his autobiography, he wrote,

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"Well, everyone knows--except us--

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"that all negroes have rhythm,

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"so they elected me class poet.

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"I felt I couldn't let
my white classmates down,

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"and I've been writing poetry ever since."

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Hughes' father wanted him
to become a mining engineer,

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so Hughes went to Columbia University,

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but he left after his freshman year

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in part because other
students had snubbed him

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and in part because he
actually didn't want

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to be a mining engineer.

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So, he signed on to work on a boat

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going more or less around the world,

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returning a couple of years later,

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this is true,

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with a red-haired monkey named Jocko.

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He didn't enjoy the trip very much,

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but that might've
actually been a good thing

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because he as wrote in his autobiography,

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"My best poems were all
written when I felt the worst.

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"When I was happy, I
didn't write anything,"

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which stands in stark contrast
to all the happy poets,

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you know, Emily Dickinson,

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Sylvia Plath, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

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Hughes aimed to write an
accessible, familiar language,

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and in that, he was influenced

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by poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar

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and also people like Carl
Sandburg and Walt Whitman,

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all of whom wrote in
vernacular, everyday language

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in the hopes that their work could appeal

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to a larger audience.

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Thanks, thought bubble.

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So, as Hughes wrote in a 1927 essay,

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classical forms didn't support
the work he wanted to do.

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"Certainly, the Shakespearean
sonnet would be no mold

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"in which to express the life

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"of Beale Street or Lenox Avenue,

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"nor could the emotions of State Street

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"be captured in rondeau.

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"I am not interested in
doing tricks with rhymes.

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"I am interested in reproducing
the human soul if I can."

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And this is what makes Hughes
such an important poet.

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He brilliantly combines formal poetry

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with the oral tradition,

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and he refuses to draw a bright line

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between fine art and folk art.

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Okay, in order to have
a better understanding

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of Hughes' approach to poetry,

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let's look at an early manifesto he wrote

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called The Negro Artist
and the Racial Mountain.

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In this essay, he criticizes
other black writers

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for being too interested in
white culture and white forms.

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He writes, "This is the
mountain standing in the way

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"of any true negro art in America--

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"this urge within the
race toward whiteness,

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"the desire to pour racial individuality

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"into the mold of
American standardization,

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"and to be as little negro

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"and as much American as possible."

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Now, some black writers,
like Countee Cullen,

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accused Hughes of being too black.

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Like in a review of Hughes'
first book, Cullen wrote,

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"There is too much emphasis
on strictly negro themes."

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But then again, later on,

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James Baldwin would condemn Hughes

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for not diving deep enough into
African-American experience.

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Like Baldwin wrote that Hughes' poems

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"take refuge finally in a fake simplicity

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"in order to avoid the
very difficult simplicity

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"of the experience."

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It's hard out there for Langston Hughes.

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Anyway, let's make up our own mind.

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I think the best way to get a sense

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of how Langston Hughes expresses himself

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is probably to like actually
read a couple of his poems.

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Let's begin with The
Negro Speaks of Rivers.

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I've known rivers:

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I've known rivers ancient as the world

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and older than the flow of
human blood and human veins.

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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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I bathed in the Euphrates
when dawns were young.

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I built my hut near the Congo
and it lulled me to sleep.

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I looked upon the Nile and
raised the pyramids above it.

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I heard the singing of the Mississippi

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when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,

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and I've seen its muddy bosom
turn all golden in the sunset.

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I've known rivers:

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ancient, dusky rivers.

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My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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Here's a bit of news
that will be discouraging

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to most of you aspiring writers out there.

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Hughes' wrote that poem

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just after graduating from high school.

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He was riding a train to
see his estranged father,

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and he passed over the Mississippi.

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He writes, "I began to
think about what that river,

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"the old Mississippi, had
meant to negroes in the past,

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"and then I began to think
about other rivers in our past:

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"the Congo and the Niger
and the Nile in Africa.

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"And the thought came to me,

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"'I've known rivers,'

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"and I put it down on
the back of an envelope

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"I had in my pocket,

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"and within the space of 10 or 15 minutes

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"as the train gathered speed in the dusk,

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"I had written this poem."

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Are you even serious?

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10 or 15 minutes?

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That, what, really?

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So, The Negro Speaks of
Rivers is in the lyric mode.

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It's poetry trying to capture
an internal emotional state.

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He uses the vision of these rivers

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to transcend his immediate relationships

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and connect himself instead

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to all of his African forefathers,

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trading the immediate for the immortal.

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The repetition of "I've known
rivers" at the beginning

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and "My soul has grown
deep like the rivers"

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at the middle and end

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gives the poem the feeling
of like a sermon or spiritual

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in keeping with Hughes'
used of folk forms.

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And then there's the
catalog of active verbs:

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"I bathed," "I built,"
"I listened," "I looked."

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Those verbs show people
actively participating

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in human life and having agency,

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that even amid oppression
and dehumanization,

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these people were still building
and listening and looking.

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And then in the latter part of the poem,

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there are adjectives that in other poems

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might be used pejoratively,

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like "muddy" and "dusky,"

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that are linked with other adjectives,

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"golden," "ancient,"

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that encourage us to perceive them

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in a far more positive light.

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So, darkness and brownness are seen

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as lustrous and valuable and revered,

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and I know that some of you will say,

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"Oh, you're over-reading the poem.

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"Hughes didn't mean any of this stuff,"

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to which I say it doesn't matter.

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These are still interesting
and cool uses of language.

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Although as it happens,
I'm not over-reading it.

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Anyway, let's look at
one more poem, Harlem,

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written in 1951.

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What happens to a dream deferred?

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Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

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Or fester like a sore-

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and then run?

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Does it stink like rotten meat?

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Or crust and sugar over-

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like a syrupy sweet?

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Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

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Or does it explode?

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The "dream" here is likely a
version of the American Dream,

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a dream, that at the time
Hughes wrote the poem,

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was still denied to
most African Americans.

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And in that sense, it's kind of optimistic

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that Hughes uses the term "deferred"

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rather than like
"destroyed" or "forbidden."

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There's also a great moment earlier

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in that same book of poems
in which Hughes writes,

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"Good morning Daddy, ain't you heard,

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"the boogie woogie rumble
of a dream deferred,"

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which uses the conventions of blues music

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to associate the deferral of the dream

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with like a "boogie woogie rumble,"

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but the imagery in this
poem is very negative.

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It often takes things that are sweet,

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and then makes them horrifying.

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You've got dried raisins, running sores,

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I guess sores aren't that sweet,

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but you do have crusty sweets.

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Even the verbs are negative,

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"dry," "fester," "stink," "crust," "sag,"

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and that works against any real optimism.

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This is all made even more
interesting and complicated

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by the fact that the poem
sounds like a nursery rhyme.

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It has neat, perfect one-syllable rhymes

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like "sun" and "run,"

00:09:39.405 --> 00:09:40.436
"meat" and "sweet,"

00:09:40.436 --> 00:09:41.899
but then you have the layout of the poem,

00:09:41.899 --> 00:09:43.403
which resists conventional stanzas,

00:09:43.403 --> 00:09:45.427
and that troubles the simplicity here.

00:09:45.427 --> 00:09:47.993
Also, the rhythm of the
poem is always changing.

00:09:47.993 --> 00:09:50.114
Like this isn't straight iambic pentameter

00:09:50.114 --> 00:09:50.961
or anything like that,

00:09:50.961 --> 00:09:53.772
and that makes it hard to
build into a comfortable pace

00:09:53.772 --> 00:09:54.692
as the reader.

00:09:54.692 --> 00:09:56.203
And then there's that last line,

00:09:56.203 --> 00:09:57.468
"Or does it explode?"

00:09:57.468 --> 00:09:58.924
which from a meter perspective,

00:09:58.924 --> 00:10:00.422
is totally fascinating

00:10:00.422 --> 00:10:03.986
because there's a stress
on every single syllable.

00:10:03.986 --> 00:10:04.819
Or

00:10:04.819 --> 00:10:05.652
does

00:10:05.652 --> 00:10:06.485
it

00:10:06.485 --> 00:10:07.318
explode?

00:10:07.318 --> 00:10:08.163
I don't want to get too lit-critty on you,

00:10:08.163 --> 00:10:09.641
but it's like the last line itself

00:10:09.641 --> 00:10:10.976
is kind of trying to explode

00:10:10.976 --> 00:10:13.066
because there's no break, no relief.

00:10:13.066 --> 00:10:14.780
So, the rhymes make it sound harmless,

00:10:14.780 --> 00:10:16.093
like it's from a children's book,

00:10:16.093 --> 00:10:18.323
but the imagery and rhythm tell another,

00:10:18.323 --> 00:10:20.234
much more barbed story.

00:10:20.234 --> 00:10:22.655
And this is definitely one of
Hughes' more political poems.

00:10:22.655 --> 00:10:25.093
He's warning that if
circumstances don't change,

00:10:25.093 --> 00:10:27.538
there might be dangerous consequences.

00:10:27.538 --> 00:10:29.512
This poem preceded the bulk
of the Civil Rights Movement,

00:10:29.512 --> 00:10:32.001
but it suggests that
withholding true equality

00:10:32.001 --> 00:10:36.803
has real risks and real costs
to everyone in a social order.

00:10:36.803 --> 00:10:37.979
There's so many other
great Langston Hughes poems

00:10:37.979 --> 00:10:40.453
that we don't have time to
discuss like Dream Boogie,

00:10:40.453 --> 00:10:41.286
I, Too,

00:10:41.286 --> 00:10:42.119
Dream Variations,

00:10:42.119 --> 00:10:43.522
Theme for English B.

00:10:43.522 --> 00:10:44.955
I wanna share just one more with you,

00:10:44.955 --> 00:10:45.817
no lit-crit or anything,

00:10:45.817 --> 00:10:46.768
just the poem.

00:10:46.768 --> 00:10:48.293
Folks I'm telling you,

00:10:48.293 --> 00:10:51.073
birthing is hard and dying is mean,

00:10:51.073 --> 00:10:52.952
so get yourself a little lovin',

00:10:52.952 --> 00:10:54.095
in between.

00:10:54.095 --> 00:10:55.307
See, sometimes literature's

00:10:55.307 --> 00:10:57.438
just in the business of
providing good advice.

00:10:57.438 --> 00:10:58.271
Thanks for watching.

00:10:58.271 --> 00:10:59.887
I'll see you next week.

00:10:59.887 --> 00:11:00.720
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00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:02.828
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00:11:02.828 --> 00:11:04.718
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00:11:18.472 --> 00:11:19.667
and as we say in my hometown,

00:11:19.667 --> 00:11:21.463
don't forget to be awesome.

00:11:21.463 --> 00:11:24.046
(upbeat music)