Langston Hughes

The negro speaks of Rivers

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) (Joplin, Missouri
United States) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during theHarlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue."

First published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues (1926).^[33] Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s

Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" in their art, that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community.

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow

of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

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

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

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went

down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn

all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Throughout Langston Hughes’ poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” the theme of roots is prominent and this theme gives rise to the ultimate meaning of the poem, even though the word “roots” itself is not used in the text. The textual details of the poem invoke strong imagery related to veins, rivers, and the roots of trees and give the reader a sense of the timelessness of these objects.

Hughes lived as an African-American, and suffered the racism of early twentieth-century America, but he rose above it and felt love and compassion for all races. His acceptance is especially evident in "The Negro Speaks of River" spoken by a cosmic voice that includes and unites all peoples.

The poem begins, "I've known rivers: / I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the / flow of human blood in human veins." The river symbolizes the linkage of all human life from the earliest time to the present. He continues, naming rivers that represent the history of Western culture.

Theodore Roethke

Dolor

Theodore Roethke ( /ˈrɛtki/ ret -kee; May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking. He won the National Book Award posthumously in 1965 for the book The Far Field.

Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan and grew up on the west side of the Saginaw River.

DOLOR

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Theodore Roethke’s “Dolor” is a thirteen-line lyric poem that explores the persona’s response to a life constrained in a grindingly repetitive institutional environment. The title of the poem sets the mood of sorrow, grief, and pain, which is totally unrelieved, as the accumulated details of office life bear down on the speaker of the poem.

The first eight lines of “Dolor” form a brutally graphic picture of a typical 1940’s office. The persona is buried under the detritus of office life: pencils, pads, folders, paper clips. The sheer weight of...

The Waking”, by Theodore Roethke (Roethke, 2003) is a poem that can be interpreted in any number of ways depending on what frame of mind the reader is in at the time he or she reads Roethke's offering. Roethke writes using metaphors. He did not quite understand what was happening feeling lost in his own mind or could it have been his own looming death. On the other hand, by repeating the line, "I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow" (Roethke, 2003) some may believe the poem is about person who is waking from a long sleep, or perhaps what Roethke considers his own never-ending nightmare. Poems are written from how the author’s heightened senses perceive what the author is writing. A writer often express feelings in a style only he or she completely understands, leaving the audience to analyze the writers offering, at times the reader completely understands what the writer is expressing, and other times, only the author can interpret the writing for his or her audience.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16