Langston Hughes and the Beat Poets, Term Paper Example

Introduction

Langston Hughes, a popular Poet Laureate of the era of Harlem Renaissance, was pivotal to the emergence of the “New Negro Movement”; a Harlem renaissance rooted on African American values and art. His poetry and writings reflected the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, which preceded the emergence of the Beat poets in the West coast by close to thirty years. At the time, poetry and music were celebrated genres, and as such unifying social factor in the African American culture. In fact, Meta DuEwa Jones observes that Hughes often referred to himself as a “folk poet” (1146), and his works reflected his efforts to relate to his audience.

The Harlem Renaissance, which happened between1920–1935, coincided with Jazz age as well as the advent of radio and music recording. The advent of the recording industry and radio increased the popularity of pop music, which in the 1920s meant Jazz music, among the masses. Born in 1902, Hughes spent most of his childhood in New York, thus, well positioned to integrate aspects of Jazz music style in his poetry. In fact, among Hughes’s important contributions to the American literature was the blues poem, a poem whose central theme was an experience of pain (Gioia, Mason, and Schoerke 1143). Nevertheless, the Harlem Renaissance had some critics. It was remarked that Harlem movement resembled the Caucasian society with hopes that assimilation would only result after initial acceptance. Hughes countered this by arguing that critics favored “the tendency to be less of a Negro and as much American as possible” and termed this “the mountain that stands in the way of true Negro art in America” (Hughes Para. 7).

Scholars criticized Hughes’s affinity of, and writing for the “low-down folks” audience. In fact, according to Jones, Hughes’s use of “plain and easily understood language” raised his reputation as a “simple poet whose poetic style was too simple and uncommon” (1147). One critic remarked, “Hughes’s poetry though felicitous when recited in clubs, won’t attract real poetry lovers” (Jones 1151). Despite much criticism from scholars and critics, Hughes continued to write poetry primarily for his main audience. As such, he departed from the mainstream style; a white cultural norm that largely suited the academic discourse of the time. Hughes’s perspective was different; he viewed poetry as something to be lived, to be experienced by the audience and as a performance by the poet. Later Hughes’s writings and poems were accompanied by jazz, an act Meta DuEwa Jones terms, “the vocal instrumentality and performance in poetry” (1144).

Hughes’s exceptional use of aesthetic performance and vocal instrumentality that related well with his audience brought into play the relationship between the audience and the poet. Rather than as a far-fetched and abstract poetry that was characteristic of classic poetry, Hughes’s style engaged his target audience. In so doing, Hughes related the audience’s traditions with oral performance to bring poetry to the people. He understood the value of entertainment and performance in unifying the “low-down-folks”. Likewise, poetry and art was the Beats weapon against racial discrimination, capitalism and poverty. Langston Hughes, in including performance and vocal instrumentality, not only anticipated the rise of a new breed of poetry but also he laid a path for the Beat movement.

The Beat Movement

A shift in poetical culture signified the end of the Harlem Renaissance one decade after its emergence. Though the Beat movement started in San Francisco in the fifties, in 1940s, beat poets had begun to emerge on the west coast and in New York. Mel van Elteren, while placing the Beats in a bohemian culture, remarks:

Beat ethos reflected some common elements that are characteristic of Beats movement including: racial discrimination and social alienation that is, the feeling of separation and spatial estrangement from main-stream white culture; activism in the form of energy and speed; angst, the spirit of sacrifice (the “Beat” as derived from “beaten”). These elements were reflected in their self-immolation; a goal that is both unsustainable and unattainable (72).

The Beat movement was, in comparison, less celebrated compared to the popular and socialized Harlem Renaissance. The poets of this time were largely anti-assimilation, anti-label, anti-establishment, and at worst, anti-everything. Indeed, it could seem that the gap between Harlem Renaissance poets including Hughes and the Beats poets is wide, however, woven within this myriad of difference are some threads of clear similarity. In this regard, the diversion from mainstream and intellectualized poetry, nods to primitivism, rejection by scholars and critics and the almost cyclical mimeses of the Harlem Renaissance poets including Hughes, to dominant cultural norms, the Beats to black culture make them to “echo and re-echo against each other…as well as create resonances” against each other (Poetics 256); a feat Beat poet Jack Spicer suggests that all Beat poems should do. Moreover, the origins of jazz as well as the concept of poetry as aesthetic performance inherent in Hughes’s works later became the foundation for the Beat poets. Thus, Hughes Harlem renaissance laid the roots for the next Beat generation, and by so doing, Hughes inadvertently became the first Beat poet. Beat poets incorporated music and aesthetic performance in poetry and performed poetry in streets and popular entertainment spots against the established norms of the time.

Jazz Roots

Langston Hughes spent most of his youth in New York arriving there in 1921. He remarks, “I fell in love with Harlem even before I arrived there. If I was a rich young man, I would have a house in Harlem and put musical steps on the front door and a button, which when pressed played Ellington tunes” (Niemi 414). Hughes’s words highlight his love of Harlem and jazz music as Edward Ellington was an influential jazz singer during that time. Harlem was predominantly occupied by African Americans and was already known as “the world’s Negro capital” (Locke 71). Musicians, writers and entrepreneurs from across America were settling in this New York neighborhood. The performance, Shuffle Along that was produced and directed by blacks was played severally on Broadway. Hughes termed it “a bright, honey of a show” and mentioned that it was his main reason of settling in Harlem (Nemi 413).

During that time (the1920s), black music especially the blues, was highly popular. With its emergence predating the late 1800s, composers of blues such as Ma Rainey became celebrities as their music became more popular. Hughes called his musical genre a bittersweet experience; “as sad as the music (blues) may sound, they too have a humorous element in them” (Para. 3). The blues experienced a national popularity with Harlem as the nerve center of this music in the 1920s. Two particular places stood out; the Cotton Club of 1923 and the Savoy Ballroom. The famous Ellington Duke played in the Cotton Club. Prior to the opening of the Savoy Ballroom, Alain Locke published The New Negro, a literary collection of poetry and fiction by black composers including Hughes. This publication offered a blueprint for Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of the black culture. Nevertheless, Hughes’s approach was more specific than Locke’s approach; while Locke foresaw assimilation, Hughes believed that African Americans establish a separate identity. In fact, in his 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, Hughes alluded that Negro art was actually racial art with the metaphor “mountain” symbolizing the challenges and dangers of assimilation into white culture. While commenting on the fact that his poems contained the theme of racial discrimination, Hughes remarks this about jazz:

But, personally, jazz one of the inherent ways that Negros can express their values and life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in the dominant white culture, a world of subway trains and work, work; the tom-tom of laughter and joy, and bitterness swallowed in a smile. (Lewis, Harlem Renaissance Reader 94–95).

In this context, Hughes is describing the blues and the jazz music. The central theme of the Beat poetry revolved around dissent and opposition to the prevailing social, cultural economic and political climate of the time that seemed to promote cultural assimilation.

The Weary Blues

Hughes firmly believed blues constituted “an integral part of African American culture” and a secular equivalent to the religious music of the spirituals (Lewis 140). However, when Hughes set out to write the blues poems, he was faced many challenges. For instance, a blues poem had to take the stanza form similar to that of blues lyrics. Often, a blues stanza was of the AAB formation with the second line echoing the first line:

“People, if you hear me humming on this song both night and day,

People, if you hear me humming on this song both night and day,

I’m just a poor boy in trouble trying to drive these blues away” (Lewis 83)

The third line was the response line to the first and second line. Hughes also used other stanza combinations common in blues lyrics such as ABB and ABC. Another challenge that Hughes faced involved was the fact that Blues music was associated with working class and segregation policy was very much in place in Cotton club. Additionally, Blues featured some bawdy language, which Hughes never included in his poems (Lewis 196). Also, Hughes faced the challenge of dialect; in order to sound “authentic” he had to avoid using Laurence Dunbar’s slang, considered cute and popular style then.

To overcome these challenges, Hughes employed a number of tactics evident in his signature piece, “The Weary Blues”. The “Weary Blues” was written when Hughes was in his early twenties. In this poem, there are two principal characters; a Negro jazzman, who sings and performs the piano and the speaker narrator:

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

He did a lazy sway. . .

He did a lazy sway. . .

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues (Lewis 77)

Mimicry of jazz and blues music is evident in this poem. First, syncopation, which was considered integral to jazz and blues music, is evident in this piece. In these lines, Hughes brings out this feature through his manipulation of rhythm. For instance, it starts with a falling trochaic rhythm, that is, a strong beat then a weak one in line 1. Line 5 is the transition line, with strong stresses in the “old gas light” and “pale dull pallor” while in line 6, the rhythm changes to an iambic one (weak beat then a strong one). Moreover, the narrator in “The Weary Blues” in lines 19-21 and 25-35 quotes the Negro jazzman twice. The quotations involve limited dialect and both make up stanzas similar to blues stanzas. Steven Tracy remarks that blues in this poem unite the Jazz performer and the speaker (221) a common feature in a beat performance.

The beat generation was popular cultural movement that a literary phenomenon of the 20^th century emphasized individuality and originality in people’s attitudes and way of thinking. Jack Kerouac, who is regarded as the king of beats along with writer Burroughs Williams, formed the Beat generation. Its ethos reflected a break away from traditional principles across all arts. Jack Spicer, in the publication My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, highlights his reputation as the main contributor to the New American Poetry. His pessimistic view, “No / One listens to poetry” (Lewis 156) was popular and highlights the fact that Spicer’s works were influential in the Beat generation, which he achieved in spite of his critique of traditional poetry styles.

Critical Reception

George Santayana at one time remarked that “power of idealization” was declining fast in the beats era, apparently criticizing the break away from traditional poetry. Spicer propagates the barbaric American culture by rejecting the aesthetics of the “eternal style that was more aggressive and immediate” (Gioia, Mason, and Schoerke 141). Spicer’s style failed to “grasp the entire reality” and rather bordered the ideal. He referred to the new poetry as “the dull horror of naked and pure poetry” (156). He rejects the call for the return to musicality in poetry: “we are not singers” (158). In the Beats era, poets like Sandburg and Whitman embraced the oral dimension as laid down by Hughes. One critic remarked that these poets were “poetic singers” whose poetry fused chants and music, which, like Hughes style, attempted to bring the audience and the performer together through performance and unifying verses. In writing Hughes’s biography, Johnston observes that Beat poets like Sandburg and Whitman conformed to the Hughes’s style, which contravened the traditional forms (126). The works of these two poets were powerful when spoken or read on the page; a feature that would have appealed to Hughes because of his music-loving nature. Moreover, Sandburg, who had earlier adopted jazz themes including lover’s quarrels and the “impoverished laments” developed a rhythmic syncopation (change of accent when stressing a weak beat) similar to Hughes works. Moreover, in poems like “Jazz fantasia”, Sandburg included daring sound effects to bring out the musicality element.

Cyclical Cultural Mimeses

During the beat generation, the poets perceived themselves as “warriors teamed up in an apocalyptic struggle to defeat traditional forces of control of the day” (Britt 127). They were deemed the custodians of the promises of modern America and opponents of capitalism as described in Walt Whitman and Oswald’s Decline of the West. The beat poets developed a widespread belief on ones individuality and spiritual freedom that connected well with the African American social transformation. Numerous Beat poets including Kaufman shaped the black culture through poetry. The Beats largely lived poetically, conforming to the conventional culture of the African Americans. In fact, Kaufman and other Beats poets’ culture arose from a common religious philosophy, which defined their behavior, lifestyle and worldview. In other words, they put in place an independent brand of sensibility that embodied a set of religiosity and ideas integral to their existence.

Moreover, the beats poets were buoyed by youthful enthusiasm to address their problems of racial discrimination and humanitarian politics and define their own style different from the traditional one. Their religious sensibility formed the platform on which their perceived their space in the real world and world experiences. This was embodied in their behavior and lifestyle, which were largely dissenting to the predominant white culture. They defined their dissent attitude through images and metaphors that characterized their works including poems and music. For instance Kerouac’s wild forms, Burrough’s cut-ups, Ginsberg’s poetry and prose, and Kaufman’s live poetry were performed in streets and stages hence influential among the African American’s who sought a way to express their feelings about the dominant culture. Embodying dissent lifestyles became an aspect of Beats poets that later became a way of poetic living through self-expression, oral and written (Johnston 115). Bonded by their mutual attraction to Hughes’s Harlem renaissance, the Beat poets including Kaufman formed a nucleus by focusing on the challenges of the present and hoping for a better future. In this era, dissent was an effective way of affirming one’s rights hence Beats was popular among the African Americans.

Harlem the “capital of black music” in the 1920s in the wake of Hughes poetry and later became the center of Beat movement. Although the neighborhood comprised of residents with mixed racial origins, it was called the “world’s Negro capital” (Locke 71) during the Harlem renaissance. African Americans artists and musicians such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey as well as the Beat poets immigrated to this place transforming the neighborhood into “Beats district” (Elteren 72).

Music as an Iteration of Poetry

Hughes’s poetry, compared to Kerouac’s “jazz writing”, which he described as “spontaneous bop prosody” was popular during the Harlem renaissance. Hughes in the “Po’ Boy Blues” captures the common experiences that the Harlem residents were going through. In fact, in the first two stanzas, the narrator talks of his boyhood in the south, where “sunshine seemed like gold” but disastrous events ruined the speaker’s life and now, he had to resign to a weary world. In the “Out of Work”, last stanza, Hughes rejects the fusion of stanza with rhetorical questions as common in rhetorical syncopation to communicate his anguish over high unemployment rates affecting the youth following the Great Depression:

Did you ever try livin’

On two-bits minus two?

I say did you ever try livin’

On two-bits minus two?

Why don’t you try it, folks,

And see what it would do to you? (Lewis 144)

This excerpt illustrates the richness of Hughes’s style in communicating the experiences of the masses during the Harlem renaissance. Clearly, Hughes’s style was well-crafted, tactful and ingenious and an inspiration to many. His cross-fertilization of music and literature during the Harlem renaissance and its after effects laid the foundation for the Beats movement and the genres and poetry performances of today. Similarly, the Beat poets fused performance and poetry to influence the masses and develop attitudes against the mainstream culture.

Nods to Primitivism

During the Harlem renaissance, Hughes extended the idea of surrealism, independence and existential. While this was rejected by scholars and dominant culture, it was popular among the African Americans. In the same spirit, Kaufman extended the same philosophy through his Beat philosophies and his surreal poetry. He blended European cultures, African American culture and the white culture to bring out works with African-American themes and poetry that reflected the rhythms of jazz. The critics of Harlem renaissance remarked that the jazz was an “artificial skins to uncover their primitive selves” (Chinitz 64) implying that jazz provide the African Americans a way to express their dissent against the dominant culture.

Additionally, Hughes employed Black American oral structures including rapping and jazz modalities in his composition. Other poets such as Laurence Dunbar, an African American writer of that generation used language and dialect that was riddled with clichés. For Hughes, The dialect used by Dunbar implied overtones dialect. During the Renaissance, two influential black writers, Weldon Johnson and B. DuBois, considered the black music a gift to Negro spirit and an inspiration. Their works, therefore, tended not to be “serious music”, containing elements of tradition, historical and classical literature (Johnston 129). Nevertheless, Johnson’s poetry contained significant elements and aspects drawn from the black church. For instance, in the poem, The Creation”, Johnson manipulates elements such as syncopation, tempo and rhythm to stress aspects of the black church:

And God stepped out on space,

And He looked around and said,

“I’m lonely—

I’ll make me a world.” (Lewis 122)

Johnson’s style resembled Hughes’s style, which though subversive emphasized on freedom and independence from the mainstream culture.

Conclusion

W.H. Auden once remarked that “the inherent relationship between life and art is so complex and so obvious to many people that it needs no explanation. In light of this, Hughes style, through unconventional and dissenting to the mainstream culture of the Harlem renaissance, had a more unifying component to his target audience, the black population. Moreover, Diann Blakely posits that poetry can easily be “substituted” for art and music for life (Blakely 360-361). Further, according to Blakely “Genuine poems become popular” because they involve the audience and involve all the available resources—attention, conscious and unconscious, left and right sections of brain, and linguistic perception of the readers from the audience (360). This arises from the inherent relationships between poetry and music during a performance, which has much influence on the masses. Hughes employs the same principle in appealing to the black population during the Harlem renaissance. He incorporates jazz music and performance developing a style that is different from the dominant white culture, which laid the path for the Beat movement.

Work Cited

Blakely, Diann. “It’s Got a Good Beat and You Can Write to It.” The Antioch Review. 58.3 (2001):360-366. Print.

Britt, Alan. “Ode to Langston Hughes.” The English Journal. 93. 5 (2001):.128-132. Print.

Chinitz, David. “Rejuvination Through Joy: Langston Hughes, Primitivism, and Jazz.” American Literary History. 9.1 (1996):60-78. Print.

Gioia, Dana, and David Mason, and Meg Schoerke, eds. Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. New York. McGraw-Hill. 2004. Print.

Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The Nation. Web. 27^th March 2011 <http://www.thenation.com/doc/19260623/hughes>.

Johnston, Allan. “Consumption, Addiction, Vision, Energy: Political Economies and Utopian Visions in the Writings of the Beat Generation.” College Literature. 32. 2 (2000):103-126. Print.

Jones, Meta DuEwa. “Listening to What the Ear Demands: Langston Hughes and His Critics.” Callaloo. 25. 4(1994):1140-1124. Print.

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979 Print.

Lewis, David Levering, ed. The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. Print.

Locke, Alain. The New Negro. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925. Print

Niemi, Robert. “The Poetry of Langston Hughes.” Magill, Frank N. Masterpieces of African-American Literature. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1992. 413-416. print

Pebworth, Ted-Larry. “John Donne, Coterie Poetry, and the Text as Performance.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 29.1(1999): 34-45 Print.

Stanislavski, Constantin. An Actor Prepares. 1936. New York. Rutledge. 1989. Print. van Elteren, Mel. “The Subculture of the Beats: A Sociological Revisit.” Journal of American Culture. 22. 3(1998): 71-99. Print.