(Name of poems), are perhaps three of the most distinguishing poems of Langston Hughes, where it becomes obvious that Langston’s everyday life and everything surrounding him have been an inspiring platform for him to write. In fact, he appears to be noticing even the slightest details of what is going on around him and be particularly drawn by nature’s beauty as well as societal issues that included racism and the rights of the African Americans of that time, among others. For that reasons his poems include intense scenes that easily carry the reader away.
Since the blues have influenced many music genres of the most recent years, it makes sense that Hughes shows influences of jazz and blues. Being born in St. Louis, Missouri, the very heart of jazz, I think it was inevitable to want to include the jazz genre in his poetry. It is commonly known that he was particularly driven by the songs he had been listening on Seventh Street in Harlem and wanted to make poems out of them (poets.org), which can be clearly shown if we read his lyrics and the structure of his poems that bears many blues and jazz-like elements. He depicts troubled experiences just like the blues did and in most of his poems he uses humor rather than melancholy, sadness and negative mood, as other forms of the blues used to demonstrate back then. Sharing the same opinion with Kristen Storer, winner of the 2005 Ratcliffe Hicks First Prize with the work “Langston Hughes and Jazz: Inspiration or Aspiration?”, I also think that Hughes most likely wanted to become a jazz singer and just felt he didn’t have what it takes to be one; so, he became the next better thing to a jazz singer: a poet and writer with strong jazz influences.
I believe Hughes has inspired many people ever since he started writing about the experiences of the African Americans. Moreover, he wrote his poems in a way that everybody could understand the message Hughes wanted to pass on. He used simple, and in cases powerful, words, repetitive phrases to draw attention and easy-to-understand language that made his poetry accessible to the entire world, which definitely must also have played an important role in influencing others with his work. That being said, I believe that Langston has been a strong influence for poets, writers and activists such as Alice Walker and the fact that the latter has released a book with the former’s biography proves it. Alison has also written about racism and the life of African Americans, just like Langston, only in a different way, probably due to the fact that her perspective of the world as a woman was other than that of Hughes’.
Also, since Hughes was actually an activist of his time fighting for the rights of the African Americans through his writings, he has probably been a role model for many civil rights activists and progressivists of today. The so called “Harlem Renaissance” that made the African American Literature and Art stand out, has left its marks on the modern culture via its contemporary writers, like Alice Walker, as previously mentioned. Hughes was considered one of the most inspiring Harlem Renaissance writers. On top of that, Martin Luther King’s speech called “I have a dream” also shows influences of Langston’s writings (Harwell).
Works Cited
Kristen Storer. “Langston Hughes and Jazz: Inspiration or Aspiration?” n.d. Print. < http://freshmanenglish.uconn.edu/documents/Essay%20Connections/2003-2006/Storer.pdf>
Poets.org. “Langston Hughes: The Songs on Seventh Street”. n.d. Website. < http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5804>
Bret Harwell (2009). “Harlem Renaissance: Origins and Influence”. Website. < http://voices.yahoo.com/harlem-renaissance-origins-influence-2814221.html?cat=38>
