Harlem Renaissance Poets - Essay Example

At this time, the sun was setting, and he still had a long journey to cover. In the first short stanza, the poem’s speaker mentions that he has ‘known rivers which are ancient as the world as well as older than the blood flow in human veins’ (Huggins, 2007). From this point of the poem, there are images of veins taking form of canals running throughout the human body and similar images of due rivers which wind around. They take the form of veins in shape where the levels of understanding within the poem in relation to the blood or water are based on the roots and circuits.

Similar to veins or rivers, the roots run deep twisting irregularly into the medium which they are planted in. The ancient rivers mentioned by speaker are similar to the blood across veins and the roots through which trees are able to provide sustenance while still giving and supporting life. This is further supported as the speaker discusses the earliest forms of civilizations which thrived within the river system and hence the theme developed by ‘roots’ bears dual meaning. The poem qualifies as one of Hughes’s most famous works which was celebrated as the soul and the voice within the black community in a time of intense racial inequality, injustice, and intolerance in America (Williams, 2010).

Through the poem, Hughes managed to unite and inspire the black community in times when their voice was not appreciated by the white society predominantly. In the end, he turned to be the poet laureate (unofficial) of at the time of the Harlem Renaissance. 2. Identify the elements in each of their poems in which you see evidence of the “double consciousness” being expressed by each author. Hughes is essentially identified as one of the unashamedly blacks within theme of blackness was demode.

Through this literary work, Hughes stressed the aspects and the theme of ‘the beauty of being black’ as he continued to explore the conditions of the black humans in a whole range of depths. His major concern was uplifting his people, whose humor, strengths, courage, and resiliency he wanted to put into record as one of the major American experiences as an American poet, novelist, social activist, columnist, and playwright (Hatch & Hamalian, 1996). He became one of the innovators in the early times of the new literary art approach called jazz poetry.

Hughes is popular for his poems developed during the Harlem Renaissance. Famously, he wrote on issues relating to the period which ‘Harlem remained in due vogue’. The major problem which the poem is centered is prostitution and only surfaces immediately the ‘veil’ of ‘Negro Harlem’ begin to kick at nighttime. The poem’s message is delivered a number of carefully constructed sentences where the issue of prostitution is actually presented within them. In the rest of the sentence, the causative agents about the problem are given and the author expresses absolute sadness for this situation as it really worries his heart.

Through the use of simple language, McKay is able to effectively convey the amount of desperation and sadness of the young girls as they resort to prostitution for purposes of survival (Hatch & Hamalian, 1996). McKay also refers to these young girls within the poem as ‘timid’, ‘tired’, and ‘weary’. He also describes their behavior as ‘halting’ due to the fact that while they go ‘trudging’ and ‘prowling’