Langston Hughes

Thanks a lot, Sue for bringing up Langston Hughes. I had always wanted you to talk about him and explain some of his poems to us. One of the greatest contemporary Iranian poets called Ahmad Shamloo translated some selected poems of his into Persian more than a decade ago. That is the good news. The bad news is that Ahmad Shamloo is one of the worst contemporary translators.

I love this one and I think it is very easy to understand even for beginners in English:

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly,
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams go,
Life is a barren field,
Frozen with snow”

They say that Langston Hughes was a waiter in a restaurant when one of America's great poets went there. He then placed one of his poems on a plate and put it on the poet's table. Then once the great poet saw Langston's poem, he got so sxcited and liked it so much that he rose from his chair and read it for the people in the restaurant aloud and announced that he thought he was a great poet.

Have you heard this, Sue?

The Dream Keeper

Dreams are the vapor of our hopes and aspirations. “What do you dream?” we ask one another when we are very young? It is so important that poets, dreamers, musicians of every culture and subculture give voice to our dreams, for without dreams and hopes a culture will die.

Here is one of Black America’s famous Dream Keepers: Langston Hughes takes a place as one of the foremost black American writers. Born in 1902 and died in 1967, he was of mixed race: his grandmothers were black and his grandfathers were white. Not uncommon in early America. Hughes wrote of Harlem, of being black, of jazz, and all the life that seethed in that black section of New York City which he loved. Hughes was definitely one of the American negros’ Dream Keepers.


“The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers.
Bring me all of your dreams
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.”

Here is a poem in which he uses common slang terms. Earlier we discussed black English, or “Jive Talk.” (I put a few definitions in for the reader.)

“Motto

I play it cool (unruffled, calm, with a certain modern flair)
And dig all jive (understand all popular things)
That's the reason
I stay alive.

My motto,
As I live and learn,
is:
Dig and Be Dug (Understand and like others and be understood and liked by them in return.)
In Return.”

Here is one of his most famous poems:

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers, by Langston Hughes

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’ve 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 Lincon
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.”

I hope you learn to love Hughes work as I do.

Sue