Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Marx's Das Kapital For Beginners Reviewed on ExpressMilwaukee.com
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Harlem Renaissance and Poetry
The Harlem Renaissance was a movement much bigger than a single
neighborhood in New York City. Though strongly associated with the
African-American economic power of Harlem, the Harlem Renaissance was a
widespread explosion of creativity among African-American artists, writers and
musicians in the 1920’s and 1930’s, some of whom also had commercial success in
mainstream culture.
Probably the best known Harlem poet was Langston Hughes, who was
influenced by previous poets like Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Langston Hughes brought
modernist ideas of using contemporary imagery and language to his personal and
powerful poetry. One of his most well-known poems “I, too Sing America” seemed
to be a direct response to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” which emphasizes Whitman’s attitude toward America, which
is part of his ideal of human life. The American people have based its faith on
the creativeness of labor, which Whitman glorifies in this poem. In “I, too Sing
America” Langston Hughes addresses the issue of black rights. Hughes hopes for
a better tomorrow white American’s will see how beautiful his people are and
appreciate them.
The legacy of the Harlem Renaissance opened doors
and deeply influenced the generations of African American writers and poets
that followed more noticeably in the emergence of Hip-Hop.
To learn more about modernist poems and the
influence of the Harlem Renaissance on poetry check out Poetry For Beginners!
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