Langston Hughes - a Literary Genius

Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the most prominent figures in the world of Harlem, has come to be an African American poet as well as a legend of a variety of fields such as music, children’s literature and journalism. Through his poetry, plays, short stories, novels, autobiographies, children's books, newspaper columns, Negro histories, edited anthologies, and other works, Hughes is considered a voice of the African-American people and a prime example of the magnificence of the Harlem Renaissance who promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice that the Negro society endured, and left behind a precious literary and enduring legacy for the future generations. In an endeavor to explore why and to what extent his poetry has still been read and used in modern days, I’ve found no African American writer has ever been an extreme inspiration to all audiences of every ethnic society as much as Langston Hughes was. More than 30 years after his death, the works of Hughes continue to appear, extensively used in the world of literature, education, filming and music, and is still relevant as an evidence of his nationwide and worldwide popularity in the present days.

According to the article “Langston: This Year’s вЂ?Come Back’ Kid” that quoting a comment from Maryemma Graham, co-director of the Langston Hughes National Poetry Project at the University of Kansas , Hughes reached that level of prominence because all his works

appeal to audiences of all generations, races and nations, and interest in his work cuts across

socioeconomic lines. With the same idea, Arnold Rampersad, Langston Hughes biographer and cognizant dean of humanities at Stanford University, wrote in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes : “These volume of the work of Langston Hughes are to be published with the same goal that Hughes pursued throughout his lifetime: making his books available to the people.”. Also, he assesses that Hughes’ key of success was his loyalty to simple writing style from which he showed no interest in poetry that most people could not read or understand “Modern poetry often appeals to a limited audience, deliberately, and contains complex vocabulary and arcane allusions...” Rampersad said. “He did not want to write like that; he had an aesthetic of simplicity." Personally, I agree with Rampersad since I’ve found no unnecessary words in Hughes’ poems. With his elegant and simple phrases, Hughes brought out complex questions about racism and inequality in the U.S. society. Besides, delivering his poetry from his heart, Hughes made many black readers feel as though everyday practices of their lives was portrayed in his writing, as writer Ishmael Reed once said, “We should honor Langston Hughes for his ability to say what was in souls of millions” . In a 1996 essay on Langston Hughes' Collected Poems in the New Republic, Helen Vendler, one of America's top poetry critics, echoed Rampersad’s point when she said that most of his poems are accessible to anyone who can read, and even the more allusive ones generally mention events that were, at the time, in the daily newspapers . In addition, when mentioning of Hughes’ masterpiece “ The Negro Speak of Rivers”, Kevin Powell, writer, founding staff member and former senior writer for Vibe magazine who helped introduce the hip-hop generation to Hughes' work, noted, “Any

group can relate to that piece. If you're an immigrant coming from Ireland or Italy, or a Jew who has escaped Nazi Germany, or if you're a woman, you can relate to that piece _ or if you're gay or lesbian, or obviously if you're African-American". However, behind their apparent simplicity, the glory of Langston Hughes' poems was to use many symbols to illustrate his main themes and still maintain the elements of profundity, humor and irony in the meanings such as those in “Ku Klux”, “The Negro Speak of Rivers”, “What Happened to a Dream Deferred ?”, “I, too, Sing America”, “Memo To Non-White People”…

Langston Hughes’ talents and popularity were greatly remarked by his influence on many African-Americans who work in a varied fields, including some who don't even realize it. In the article "A legend of many cultures: Writers, musicians and actors can sight influence of Langston Hughes", John Mark Eberhart makes it clear that Hughes’ influence spread beyond writers to many actors and musicians. For instant, Novelist Alice Walker, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for “The Color Purple,'' and Paule Marshall are both thankful to Hughes’ wisdom and approach to literature that had shined their writing career and helped give them courage to write honestly . In addition, in the interview by Kalamu Ya Slaam, Woodie King, often called a "renaissance man" who has excelled as a producer, a director for stage and film, a writer and editor, a teacher and mentor, and a founder and artistic director of theatrical

institutions, credits his literary bias toward short stories to the influence of playwright Langston Hughes, and recalls his fateful meeting with Hughes that changed his life by leading him to writing career and impelled him to become an actor. Moreover, learning Hughes' poems from his

mother, Actor Andre Lee Ellis, founder and managing director of Andre Lee Ellis and Company,

acknowledges of using them in his show "Telling It Like It 'Tis" (Higgins). In “Dream lives on вЂ" Word of poet Hughes still resonate”, Rampersad concludes that it's hard to think of a modern African-American writer who was not influenced by Hughes.

By comparing Langston Hughes’ popularity against another African American poet of the Harlem Renaissance - Countee Cullen, we can clearly confirm his steady position in the world of literature. According to my random search within the Infotrac database, there are more than two hundred articles writing about Hughes’life as well as his writing style, popularity and influence, including those from many top national critics and journalists, while the number of articles that relates to Countee Cullen is fifteen. Another investigation I made is to search for the quantity of books published by or about Langston Hughes in