ipl-logo

Analysis Of The Negro Speaks Of Rivers By Langston Hughes

1601 Words7 Pages
Analysis of The Negro Speaks of rivers by Langston Hughes
By Ida Christensen

I’m going to be writing about the poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers. This poem is from the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes created this when he was just eighteen years old. This poem is one of the greatest and most beautiful poems Langston Hughes has ever created, and I’m writing this to explain to you just why that is. This meaningful poem was written on a train ride to Mexico, where he passed the Mississippi river. It’s about the future and of the past. The Mississippi river inspired him, and it reminded him of slavery in America. He saw the beauty in the river and all the challenges it has had. He began to think about what this muddy river meant for the Negro people, how the history was once made to this river. A year after Langston had created his poem it was published in a newspaper in 1921.
Langston Hughes was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance because he created many poems, books and novels. His first book ever published was the weary blues. He created a voice for the blacks using his skills. His inspiration was Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. He was very inspired by them because they were big writers and they both made poems about the “black community”. He decided that he wanted to write poems and novels when he was seventeen. That took some work, so he had to have good education. “A student at Columbia University in New York, he was in the midst of the
Open Document