Writer+18

Langston Hughes:

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place."  **Theme For English B by Langston Hughes **  The instructor said,

Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you-- Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem, through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y, the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me--who? Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn't make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races. So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white-- yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me-- although you're older--and white-- and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Countee Cullen:

Born in 1903 in New York City, Countee Cullen was raised in a Methodist parsonage and educated in a primarily white community. He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen. He differed from other poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other blacks or use popular black themes in his writing. He died in 1946. **Yet Do I Marvel By Countee Cullen**

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

The Harlem Renaissance is known as one of the greatest literary movents because it brought understanding to the people of other races. Not only how hard it was for certain races to go about their everyday life, but how hard some lifes were. I mean it gave people more of an idea how others were treated.That most peoples pain went further than skin deep. Emotions that some hadn't gone through, such as falling in love, losing love, or being treated horribly because of your skin tone, who your parents were, or what kind of job your parent had. Poetry gave people a voice. Just like in a book, people write about stuff that some have been through and others haven't and they went about it so skillfully that even if you haven't went through it, you could still feel their pain. Poems just like books, can make you feel certain emotions you haven't ever felt before. Even if you werent there for the time frame of the Harlem Renaissance and just like I, you are reading a book or writing a project about that time period and you were to look up some poems from that time, you could still feel those intense emotions (hate,sorrow,love,lust,loss) and you could feel that, not only feel it but feel it so deeply it were as if you yourself were the one who it was about. Like you were the one experiancing all of those emotions. All poets of that certain time frame wrote about different things. Some positive, some negitave, some mutual, some had so many different emotions in that one poem. It all just depends on if you went through that certain thing that was writen about in the poem, that mattered how if affected you.