Harlem Renaissance: The Life And Work Of Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes was first recognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. Du Bose Heyward wrote in the New York Herald Tribune in 1926: "Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a 'first book ' that …show more content…

He was deemed the poet laureate of the Negro race. A title which the man who fueled the Harlem renaissance deserved. His work include “the blues imp playing”, “dreams variations”, “Harlem mulatto”, sale on the black and “tambourines to glory”. He used dialect frequently on his uniquely formed poetry and music was also extremely important in his life. Jazz and bebop were both important in the structure of his writing. Langston was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary from called jazz poetry. He famously wrote about the period “the negro was in vogue’. It was later paraphrased as when Harlem was in vogue. Hughes tried it depict the law life in their art that is the real lives on black in the lower social-economic stanza. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of working class blacks in America he portrayed as full of joy laughter and music. He stressed a racial consciousness and culture nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thoughts united people of African descent and American across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk culture and back aesthetic. Langston achieved fame endurance as a poet during the burgeoning of the arts known as the Harlem renaissance. Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays that Hughes "has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He has been, unlike most nonblack poets other than Walt