Langston Hughes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Poem Animation
Heres a virtual movie of Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) discussing and reading his earliest and possibly best known poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" written the summer after his graduation from high school in Cleveland, and first published in an African American publication called "Crisis" in (1921).
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.Lest weiter auf afroklick.de/Menschen - Ein Nachruf auf den afroamerikanischen Schriftsteller Langston Hughes
Vorschau
Das neue schwarze Selbstbewusstsein
"We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."
und
Die harten Wanderjahre
„There was one thing that hurt me a lot when I talked with the people: The africans looked at me and would not believe I was a Negro. “
Das schwarze Harlem
Juke Box Love Song
I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.
via afroklick.de