Of Hughes's Jazz Poems example essay topic

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin Missouri to Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes and James Nathaniel Hughes. Shortly after he was born his parents separated. Hughes lived his entire childhood with his mother, maternal grandmother, and family friends. His father moved from the U. S to various other places where he finally settled down in Mexico as a lawyer and businessman.

Despite this fact, Hughes grew up in dire poverty. While Hughes was in his early teens, his mother attended college for a year, but was unable to continue attending because she was unable to find a job that could help pay for her schooling. She moved from city to city trying to find work while Hughes stayed with his grandmother. After her death in 1914 Hughes lived with her friends the Reeds, where for the first time he had enough to eat. Hughes then went to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother. There he started writing poetry after he was elected class poet by his graduating grammar school class.

His family later moved to Cleveland, Ohio where he attended the Central High School. While there he also published various poems in the school magazine. There he was introduced to poems written by poets such as Dunbar, Longfellow, Sandburg, etc. In the summer of 1919, Hughes visited his father in Mexico.

This was a summer that Hughes would never forget because he was that close to committing suicide. In addition he wrote "When Sue Wears Red". Later that summer he graduated from high school where he wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which was later published in the Crisis. This was also a year in which his father relented but agreed to send him to Columbia University rather than Europe.

Hughes dropped out of Columbia University after only one year. Prior to Hughes dropping out, the breach between him and his father became final. From that moment, they never saw each other again. Hughes later moved to live in Harlem between the years of 1922-1923. This was a period of black upliftment and also the Harlem Renaissance. This is when he got his first public reading of "The Weary Blues".

Around December of 1925 he won poetry prizes from The Crisis and Opportunity. There he began writing poetry in the fom of blues and spirituals. While working as a busboy at Ward man Park Hotel, he paced three poems at poet Vac hel Lindsay's dinning table. Lindsay then announced that he had discovered a new poet.

The following day Hughes was given nation wide publicity. In Feburary of 1926, he entered Lincoln University where he published various poems. In June of 1929 he graduated from Lincoln University. Hughes went on to publish various poems while receiving monetary awards. In May of 1932 he received a telegram inviting him to partake with other blacks on a movie making trip to the Soviet Union.

Hughes toured the Soviet alone for six months. During this time he was inspired by reading D.H. Lawrence's short stories in which he wrote his own short stories and sent them to NewYork for publication. He then went on to publish a collection of his stories in 1934. During this time he joined radical protest movements on the west Coast. Later that year when Hughes was 32 years of age he got a telegraph announcing his fathers death. Hughes immediately left for Mexico for the reading of the will.

Hughes's father left his entire estate to three Spanish Catholic spinsters. Langston was never mentioned in his will. Hughes remember his father as a man whose only interest was making money. In particular he despised blacks, Mexicans, and Indians, all of whom he considered ignorant, backward, lazy, and dishonest.

In Onwuchekwa Jemie's Langston Hughes he quotes the book "The Big Sea" (pp. 39-41, 49) which says: My father hated Negroes. I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro. He disliked all of his family because they were Negroes and remained in the United States, where none of them had a chance to be much of anything but servants... My father had a great contempt for all poor people. He thought it was their own fault that they were poor. He later returned to Cleveland with his mother where he spent atleast one year.

He then moved to Spain where he spent six months covering the Baltimore Afro-American. By 1938, he returned to NewYork where he founded various theatres and published various plays for Hollywood films. Although Hughes is known for the various plays that he published, he is mostly known for his poetic literature. When Langston writes poetry, he plans to record and interpret the loves of common black folks. When Langston went to New york to live this was the period of the black upliftment and various political and economic struggle. In his writing he tries to capture those struggles that he and others around him has been through or was going through.

When writing poetry, Hughes paid very little attention to anything that didn't have an impact on the black race. In addition to this being a period for black upliftment, this was also a period of the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a time where African Americans really showed their work by either publishing or reading it orally. During this time their were various forms of music that was also developing one of which was Jazz. Jazz is a form of music which expressions come the use of instruments. This form of music was used to express one's self through the use of instruments.

Because of the genesis of Jazz during this time, part of Hughes's poetry tend to revolve around it. To Hughes the term Jazz is understood to mean black music. Jazz being what it is, the jazz poem attempts to capture the instrumental vigor that it has. When Hughes writes his poetry using Jazz rhythms these poems tend to be written in the language of the common people.

Jazz poems tries to capture the essence of jazz itself and the message that the singers are relaying. Most of the poems strength is in its rhythmic energy which is the same rhythmic energy captured in jazz itself. Some of hughes's jazz poems includes "Death in Harlem", and "Montage of a Dream Deferred". "Death in Harlem" is a very realistic poem that deals with and gives an analysis of Harlem nightlife. This poem builds on a jazz narrative on the structure of a black epic. The setting is Dixie's, a Harlem basement nightclub.

This poem talks about a Texas kid who has a thick bill roll in his hands. This lady named Arabella Johnson has her hands on him and their enjoying the night together. They start to drink and dance and just simply enjoying themselves. She then goes to the ladies room and to her surprise when she comes back some other good-time woman is dancing with him. She got so angry because she felt as if this other woman had shown her great disrespect. She then takes out her pistol and shoots the woman.

The police then comes and arrests Arabella and she is taken to jail. The Texan Kid then picks up another woman and goes to bed with her. In this poem Dixie's nightclub symbolizes a den of death. Dixie is someone who wants money and doesn't care how they make it.

It could be sex money blood money, any money. In this nightclub both whites and blacks poor and rich merge. Down South in Dixie the white woman played on the fact that any rumor of sex or rape of a white woman by a black man meant instant death for the black man. During this time the white women were very infatuated by the black man.

If the black man gave in to such infatuation this usually was done in secret. If news of this involvement was to be known the women quickly called it rape. Death in this sense was almost inevitable as the moment of life. This poem relates to situations that is very common to life as we know it today.

When a man has a woman she isn't seen as anyone special, if she goes from him for whatever reason, the next girl that she picks up is just as good as she was. Montage of a Dream Deferred was written in 1951.