WEBVTT

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Professor Langdon
Hammer: Langston Hughes is

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our subject today.

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Let's start with a poem you
probably know.

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It's on page 687.

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It's really the poem for which
Hughes is perhaps most known and

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was first known.
He composed it when he was

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eighteen years old.

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It is "The Negro Speaks of
Rivers."

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You can see that it's dedicated
to W.E.B.

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Dubois.
Dubois was the important leader

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and speaker who was the editor
of the magazine The

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Crisis, which published this
poem.

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And The Crisis had a
circulation of 100,000 readers

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at least, if not more,
and is in that way quite a

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debut to have.
And it put Hughes immediately

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in a political magazine,
in a race magazine,

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and in some ways in a popular
magazine,

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not one of the little magazines
of modernism.

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I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as

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the world and older than the
flow of human

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blood in human veins.

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My soul has grown deep like the
rivers.

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I bathed in the Euphrates when
dawns were young.

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I built my hut near the Congo
and it lulled me to sleep.

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I looked upon the Nile and
raised the pyramids above it.

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I heard the singing of the
Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

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went down to
New Orleans,

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and I've seen its muddy bosom
turned all golden in the sunset.

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I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

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My soul has grown deep like the
rivers.

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Hughes's speaker is a
particularized voice,

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an "I," at the same time that
he is a general one,

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"The Negro."
The Negro speaks of and for a

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people, as a representative
figure.

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Like Hart Crane,
Hughes returns to Walt Whitman,

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Walt Whitman in his ambition to
speak of and for America.

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At the same time,
unlike Crane,

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Hughes takes on Whitman's
versification – Whitman's ways

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of making a line,
his free verse,

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his paratactic style in which
things are listed – as opposed

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to Crane's crumpled and
condensed quatrains,

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stanzas.
Here, the relation between the

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particular and the general,
between the individual and a

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type, is one of the poem's
subjects.

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It is a poem about knowledge,
about identity,

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and about history,
too.

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What the "I" knows is rivers.

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We learn just a few things
about those rivers.

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They are ancient as the world.

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They are primordial.

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They are even,
it seems, prior to the human in

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this sense, prior to human blood
which conventionally is a way of

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representing race,
of speaking about race.

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So, the rivers are older it
seems than any race,

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and yet they're also an image
of racial blood and flowing.

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Hughes is writing about a
universal from a particular

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point of view.
The flowing of rivers is like

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the flowing of blood in the
poem.

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And to know them is to know
what is under or inside

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particular racial experience at
the deepest level.

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In this sense,
we might paraphrase that title,

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"The Negro Speaks of Human Life
and History, as The Negro Has

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Known It."
It's a poem concerned with

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human life and history,
the very most general terms of

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experience from the particular
perspective of the black speaker

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and from the perspective of
black experience.

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As the poem goes on,
the rivers are named and

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localized in history:
the Euphrates,

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origin of civilization and the
site of the Jewish captivity in

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Babylon;
the Congo evoking Africa and

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its people;
the Nile, site of the pyramids,

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those archetypal human
monuments, fixed in place and

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pointed to the sky and in that
sense counter-posed to the

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flowing river.
Being The Negro here means

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knowing all of these places.

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The poem begins interestingly
in the perfect present tense:

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"I've known," "I've known";
"My soul has grown."

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This is an interesting tense
that evokes simultaneously the

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past and the present,
suggests a past carried over

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and into the present.

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Then in that third stanza,
the poem shifts into the simple

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past: "I bathed," "I built," "I
looked," "I heard."

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The Mississippi,
the line about the Mississippi,

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continues this pattern but then
in the middle of the line breaks

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out of it: "I heard the singing
of the Mississippi when Abe

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Lincoln went down to New
Orleans,

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and I've seen its muddy bosom
turn all golden in the sunset."

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There's a way in which the
story of Lincoln and the freeing

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of the slaves that Hughes gets
to at that point seems to break

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out of the particular and then
reach into this perfect present

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tense to evoke some kind of
ongoing experience,

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moving from the past to the
present again.

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And then the poem goes back
into that perfect present.

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There's a sense of past action
that is ongoing,

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and active, present in the
poem.

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The rivers, they're "deep,"
dark, "dusky."

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They also, at this pivotal
moment in the poem,

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turn "golden."
The poem projects a view of

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black history in which to be
black means simultaneously to be

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the product of black experience
across history,

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at particular moments –
particular moments,

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particular times – and also
involved in the deepest

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trans-historical meanings of the
human.

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The journey that the poem
describes links different times

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and places and ultimately white
and black when Lincoln,

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America's white President,
goes down to New Orleans and

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resolves to end slavery.

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This is a remarkable poem for a
young man to write.

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Let me hold up this interesting
photo for a second.

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This is a picture of Hughes
still in the mid-twenties when

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his work was just being read for
the first time.

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It's a remarkable poem,
I think, for a young poet to

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begin with.
You could compare it to other

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early, sort of inaugurating or
initiating poems that we've

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talked about,
such as Crane's "Legend" or

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"The Love Song of J.

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Alfred Prufrock" and other
sorts of entries into poetry.

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We could compare its vision of
the past, too,

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to that which we find in
perhaps Pound or Eliot,

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which leads me to this general
question of how do we place

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Langston Hughes in this course
and more generally how do we

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position the black language and
experience in his work in the

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general context of modern
poetry?

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Where else in this course does
The Negro speak?

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Have you seen black people or
heard black voices in other

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poems?
Blackness figures in Frost,

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interestingly,
as a kind of charged symbolic

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color but in a very generalized
way that isn't linked

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immediately to race,
although it certainly could be

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seen to in certain contexts.

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You could say the same thing,
I think, about Stevens;

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although, you do,
in Stevens, encounter certain

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black figures,
including the word "nigger" in

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one poem.
There's no question,

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though, that in Stevens and in
Frost, the poetry doesn't aspire

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to,
doesn't pretend to,

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represent the experience of
African Americans.

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Marianne Moore,
whom we'll read soon,

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has a poem called "Black
Earth."

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When Ezra Pound read it,
he wrote to her and asked,

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since he didn't know – he had
never met her – was she

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Ethiopian?
This is a truly crazy question

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but an interesting one.

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In this poem Moore speaks about
an elephant and from the point

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of view of an elephant in ways
that might seem to possibly

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speak for black people,
but only on the level of fable

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or allegory.
Crane comes closer.

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If you turn back a few pages in
your anthology to the Crane

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section, the first poem in that
selection is called "Black

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Tambourine."
That's on page 607.

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That poem describes,
again, a kind of symbolic,

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generalized type of the black
man as a figure trapped in what

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Crane called a "mid-kingdom" in
popular imagination – the

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mid-kingdom between man and
beast.

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Crane sees the black
entertainer as a kind of figure

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of the artist,
something like his tramps,

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his wanderers,
Charlie Chaplin.

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Crane had initially intended to
include in "The Bridge" a

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section that was to be a
dramatic monologue spoken by a

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Negro porter on a train.

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That plan fell away,
but there are still traces of

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that intention in his section of
the poem called "The River,"

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which tries to evoke aspects of
black experience,

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to integrate jazz,
blues,

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and spirituals into Crane's
poetry and make them part of the

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history that "The Bridge" tells.

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Crane might have had as one
model for the inclusion of

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African-American expressive
forms, surprisingly,

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perhaps, Eliot.
When "O O O O that

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Shakespeherian Rag"--when that
breaks into The Waste

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Land,
jazz and a distinctively

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African-American form also enter
Eliot's poem.

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Eliot was writing,
however, from the point of view

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of white Europe,
and blacks tend not to figure

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in his poetry except perhaps as
figures of otherness,

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those perhaps hooded hoards
that swarm across the plains in

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The Waste Land.

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The Beinecke includes in its
Ezra Pound Papers an interesting

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selection of poems published
with Eliot's juvenilia not so

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long ago;
a selection of poems that

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circulated between Pound and
Eliot and certain other friends,

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which are obscene racist
limericks that Eliot wrote about

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King Bolo and his big,
black, bastard queen.

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This, too, is part of Eliot's
oeuvre, though not part of the

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public form of it,
and it's important information

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about at least one way in which
black life figured in the high

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modernist imagination of Eliot
and others.

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Here's that photo I started to
show a moment ago.

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I suppose Hughes is the only
modernist poet who begins as a

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busboy.
This is a photo from 1925,

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taken at the Wardman Park Hotel
for a newspaper story about

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Hughes.
Hughes had been,

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it seems, discovered by the
poet Vachel Lindsay,

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at lunch when Hughes,
or so the anecdote goes,

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presented his poems to Lindsay,
and Lindsay,

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taken with them,
went on to read them that night

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at a reading Lindsay was giving.

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Of course, this was all
carefully orchestrated by

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Hughes.
If he's a busboy,

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he is also a poet and
wants--he's really,

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in a sense, almost in costume
there and posing for the

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newspaper photos.

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But it's an interesting and
important image of the man

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Hughes was as he began to write
poems like "The Negro Speaks of

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Rivers."
If white poetry turns away from

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African-American people and
their experience in modernism,

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Hughes also himself intended to
turn away from white poetry.

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"The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain," that prose

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piece I've asked you to read at
the end of your anthology on

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page 964,
makes this argument very

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forcefully.
It begins by Hughes contrasting

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his own intention as an artist
with that of one of the most

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promising of the young Negro
poets who,

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as Hughes interprets his
ambition, wants to be like a

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white poet and in that sense
would like to be white.

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Hughes is writing here about
Countee Cullen,

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a rival artist whose work you
can sample on page 727 and

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following in your anthology.

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Hughes wants to get out of the
curious condition of wanting to

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"write white," so to speak,
by redefining what it would

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mean to sing in poetry.

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On page 965 he juxtaposes two
black audiences:

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one what he calls "self-styled
'high-class' Negroes,"

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that represent bourgeois norms
or the aspiration to them and

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that seek what Hughes calls
"Nordic" culture;

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and he contrasts them rather to
another expression of black life

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with which he identifies
himself.

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…[These]
are the low-down folks,

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the so-called common element,
and they are the majority [he

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writes]--may the Lord be
praised!

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The people who have their nip
of gin on Saturday nights and

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are not too important to
themselves or the community,

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or too well fed,
or too learned to watch the

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lazy world go round.

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They live on Seventh Street in
Washington or State Street in

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Chicago and they do not
particularly care whether they

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are like white folks or anybody
else.

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Their joy runs, bang!

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into ecstasy.
Their religion soars to a shout.

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Work maybe a little today,
rest a little tomorrow.

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Play awhile.
Sing awhile.

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O, let's dance!
These common people are not

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afraid of spirituals as for a
long time their more

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intellectual brethren were,
and jazz is their child.

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And he continues.

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He juxtaposes ecstasy,
shouting, and jazz against what

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he calls here "American
standardizations."

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They furnish a wealth of
colorful distinctive material

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for any artist because they
still hold their individuality,

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their individuality in the face
of American standardizations.

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And perhaps these common
people will give to the world

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its truly great Negro artist,
the one who is not afraid to be

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himself [and which I,
Langston Hughes,

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aspire to be].
These are important statements.

20:39.850 --> 20:46.310
They show Hughes's ambitions;
they show him positioning

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himself in relation to another
African-American writer,

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other African-American
audiences for culture.

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In making the move that he is
doing here – a move that's

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really deeply influential in
African-American literature and

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poetry,
which as a whole descends from

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Hughes rather than from Countee
Cullen – Hughes is still,

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however, doing something
similar, after all,

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to the other modern poets we've
been reading in this course.

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And I want to suggest some of
the continuities between Hughes

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and these other writers.

21:31.910 --> 21:36.720
Like Yeats, for example,
Hughes wanted to be a

21:36.718 --> 21:41.738
representative figure,
to speak for a people;

21:41.740 --> 21:47.590
and we speak of the Irish
Renaissance just as we speak of

21:47.594 --> 21:53.034
the Harlem Renaissance,
of which Hughes was a central

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figure.
Like Williams,

21:55.717 --> 22:00.437
like Moore, like Crane,
and like Frost also,

22:00.439 --> 22:06.479
Hughes was very conscious of
being an American poet,

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eschewing European examples,
for the most part,

22:11.380 --> 22:17.240
and seeking to bring into
poetry lives and language that

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had not been seen previously as
poetic material.

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At the same time,
like Pound and like Eliot,

22:28.365 --> 22:34.855
Hughes was interested in a long
historical view,

22:34.859 --> 22:39.169
and he makes links between
people of different times and

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places in what was a global
vision,

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for Hughes, of history.

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Like Crane, Hughes published
his first book in 1926,

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The Weary Blues.

22:53.539 --> 22:57.599
Like Crane, Hughes is--you
could call him a

22:57.599 --> 23:00.499
second-generation modernist.

23:00.500 --> 23:07.590
He's consciously coming after
figures like Eliot and Pound,

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and Yeats and Frost for that
matter.

23:12.240 --> 23:16.200
This book, too,
is published by Knopf,

23:16.198 --> 23:20.798
Alfred Knopf:
publisher of Wallace Stevens's

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first book, Harmonium.

23:24.329 --> 23:27.619
So, Hughes is,
in that way,

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very much part of the same New
York poetry world in which

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Stevens and Crane and others are
appearing.

23:40.670 --> 23:47.440
Like Frost, Hughes wanted to
get vernacular speech into

23:47.437 --> 23:52.587
poetry, and like Frost,
Hughes for the most part did

23:52.586 --> 23:56.686
not write for Little Magazines,
but rather popular ones,

23:56.690 --> 23:58.510
as I was suggesting.

23:58.509 --> 24:02.489
In fact, both Frost and Hughes
went on to make a living in

24:02.494 --> 24:05.854
poetry, and they have a kind of
national fame,

24:05.849 --> 24:11.829
a general readership that
really none of our other poets

24:11.827 --> 24:16.577
did.
Like Pound, like Yeats in the

24:16.576 --> 24:25.326
teens, Hughes is interested in
what he calls "a naked style," a

24:25.333 --> 24:29.433
kind of ascetic aesthetic.

24:29.430 --> 24:36.490
Like the other poets we've been
reading, Hughes is a city poet.

24:36.490 --> 24:40.960
He's a metropolitan poet,
and he styles himself,

24:40.962 --> 24:45.722
as we've just seen,
against middle-class tastes and

24:45.720 --> 24:48.290
norms and expectations.

24:48.289 --> 24:52.479
And importantly,
like the other moderns,

24:52.483 --> 24:57.863
he finds no consolation in
traditional religion,

24:57.859 --> 25:06.289
even while he sometimes works
with spirituals and often evokes

25:06.289 --> 25:10.849
Christian motifs in his poetry.

25:10.849 --> 25:12.879
In all these ways,
Hughes is, I think,

25:12.878 --> 25:15.508
helpful to read at this point
in the semester,

25:15.509 --> 25:18.979
partly because his affinities
with the other moderns,

25:18.976 --> 25:21.306
once you start to recognize
them,

25:21.309 --> 25:24.499
help us to see a kind of whole
picture.

25:24.500 --> 25:31.020
But then, just having said
that, we have to start talking

25:31.019 --> 25:34.279
about Hughes's difference.

25:34.279 --> 25:40.489
If he is an American poet,
he is just as importantly an

25:40.490 --> 25:43.250
African-American poet.

25:43.250 --> 25:48.660
If he is an internationalist,
like Pound and Eliot,

25:48.658 --> 25:54.168
he's interested in the
international struggle of the

25:54.174 --> 25:57.964
worker and the oppressed races.

25:57.960 --> 26:06.090
This is Hughes writing about a
journey to Cuba that he made.

26:06.089 --> 26:10.949
He traveled,
particularly in the thirties,

26:10.946 --> 26:16.396
frequently as a kind of
representative of black

26:16.395 --> 26:22.905
Americans sponsored by left
groups and traveled to,

26:22.910 --> 26:29.130
well, Soviet Russia,
among other places.

26:29.130 --> 26:34.810
If Hughes's style is stripped
down and naked,

26:34.807 --> 26:42.027
it is used to describe a people
who have been stripped of

26:42.034 --> 26:45.264
dignity and identity.

26:45.259 --> 26:50.479
If he's a city poet,
he's not a poet of the village

26:50.484 --> 26:54.354
or of London,
but rather of Harlem.

26:54.349 --> 27:02.789
And if God has withdrawn from
the world of Hughes's poems,

27:02.794 --> 27:09.464
God has left people not to
Eliotic despair and

27:09.461 --> 27:18.681
epistemological anxiety,
but rather to rape and murder.

27:18.680 --> 27:23.100
You might remember the last
presidential election.

27:23.100 --> 27:25.540
Do you remember that?

27:25.539 --> 27:30.849
John Kerry, always in search of
a theme, which he never quite

27:30.850 --> 27:34.920
found, seized for a little while
on the phrase,

27:34.922 --> 27:38.022
"Let America be America again."

27:38.020 --> 27:42.350
Sounds good.
It's the title of a poem by

27:42.354 --> 27:49.454
Langston Hughes which Kerry also
made note of when he referred to

27:49.452 --> 27:53.542
that,
when he quoted Hughes,

27:53.539 --> 28:00.809
which was resonant,
which sounded good in all sorts

28:00.810 --> 28:04.530
of ways,
and which had the added

28:04.527 --> 28:09.037
advantage of letting Kerry quote
a black writer.

28:09.039 --> 28:14.369
But then, if you remember this,
you will also remember that

28:14.368 --> 28:19.968
pundits quickly pointed out that
this was not a poem nostalgic

28:19.971 --> 28:25.481
for a golden era of democracy
but rather a protest poem about

28:25.483 --> 28:29.253
the inequities of American
history,

28:29.250 --> 28:34.680
and it was written by a leftist
who had ties to the Communist

28:34.676 --> 28:39.096
Party.
Whoops.

28:39.099 --> 28:43.829
This is Langston Hughes,
and it's a Russian script on

28:43.828 --> 28:47.918
the left, and there's Hughes in
the middle,

28:47.920 --> 28:54.070
surrounded by a variety of
comrades in Russia in the '30s.

28:54.069 --> 28:59.949
And alas, this is not what John
Kerry wanted to project.

28:59.950 --> 29:06.020
Or here is Hughes with two
Soviet soldiers,

29:06.016 --> 29:09.046
also from the '30s.

29:09.049 --> 29:14.159
Hughes is much photographed in
many different roles and public

29:14.164 --> 29:18.864
scenes, and there's a vast
archive of those papers at the

29:18.859 --> 29:23.889
Beinecke,
from which these images come.

29:23.890 --> 29:29.160
Although Hughes's reputation is
a little bit like Frost's in

29:29.158 --> 29:34.608
having this general readership
– he's poet you probably read

29:34.606 --> 29:39.956
even in elementary school – he
poses all sorts of political

29:39.964 --> 29:43.094
problems that Frost does not.

29:43.089 --> 29:47.379
Well, here is Hughes with
somebody else,

29:47.384 --> 29:52.564
someone more acceptable to be
photographed with:

29:52.559 --> 29:56.299
W.C.
Handy, in some ways the father

29:56.302 --> 29:59.392
of the blues,
as he's called,

29:59.385 --> 30:03.675
and a close friend of Hughes's.

30:03.680 --> 30:08.740
Let me talk about Hughes and
the blues.

30:08.740 --> 30:12.570
Here's an image,
an illustration of Hughes's

30:12.573 --> 30:17.123
poem "Too Blue" by the
African-American artist Jacob

30:17.120 --> 30:18.280
Lawrence.

30:18.280 --> 30:23.400


30:23.400 --> 30:28.750
Hughes, from The Weary
Blues forward,

30:28.746 --> 30:36.576
frequently presents his poems
as forms of music as allied to,

30:36.579 --> 30:41.009
as identified with,
as perhaps metaphorical

30:41.013 --> 30:44.923
versions of African-American
forms,

30:44.920 --> 30:47.230
particularly,
but not only,

30:47.232 --> 30:50.232
the blues.
Later in his career,

30:50.227 --> 30:55.427
his readings would sometimes be
accompanied by music.

30:55.430 --> 31:03.840
In his best blues poems,
Hughes is not trying to write

31:03.836 --> 31:09.066
words for music,
I don't think,

31:09.069 --> 31:17.309
but rather is trying to write
poems that allude to and let us

31:17.309 --> 31:25.279
hear in metaphorical ways the
musical traditions which they

31:25.275 --> 31:30.515
are drawn on,
and the culture and experience

31:30.523 --> 31:32.663
from which they come.

31:32.660 --> 31:38.150
Hughes at his most powerful
uses musical forms,

31:38.146 --> 31:44.346
popular musical forms,
for effects of compression and

31:44.347 --> 31:48.877
to develop really complex
ironies,

31:48.880 --> 31:55.440
often through repetition,
usually built out of the

31:55.443 --> 32:00.403
three-part structures of the
blues.

32:00.400 --> 32:09.910
Let's look at the poem "Song
for a Dark Girl" on page 691.

32:09.910 --> 32:17.180


32:17.180 --> 32:26.150
Like many of Hughes's poems,
it's a simple poem in its

32:26.154 --> 32:35.134
structure, and yet that
simplicity conveys real verbal

32:35.129 --> 32:40.999
complexity.
And the poem in its popular

32:40.995 --> 32:48.875
mode nevertheless invites a kind
of close reading that's demanded

32:48.877 --> 32:54.917
by modernist poetry,
which presents itself as

32:54.923 --> 33:00.953
compressed, imagistic,
difficult, and so on.

33:00.950 --> 33:05.810
Let's look at it.

33:05.810 --> 33:11.810
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)

33:11.810 --> 33:18.300
They hung my black young lover
To a cross roads tree.

33:18.300 --> 33:24.680
Way Down South in Dixie
(Bruised body high in air)

33:24.680 --> 33:33.580
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.

33:33.580 --> 33:39.870
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)

33:39.870 --> 33:46.350
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked

33:46.352 --> 33:52.152
tree.
This is a song for a dark girl,

33:52.147 --> 33:58.337
suggesting at once words for
her to sing – a dramatic

33:58.344 --> 34:05.574
monologue – and also "for" in
the sense of a kind of homage or

34:05.574 --> 34:12.184
tribute to her.
She is "dark."

34:12.179 --> 34:19.899
As in other Hughes poems,
the word here seems to mean

34:19.902 --> 34:26.142
"black," also "darkened":
abused, grieving,

34:26.139 --> 34:31.029
shadowed.
It's all held there in that

34:31.026 --> 34:35.156
simple word.
"Way Down South in Dixie" is a

34:35.159 --> 34:38.049
line from the minstrel refrain.

34:38.050 --> 34:41.530
It's borrowed here and adapted.

34:41.530 --> 34:48.150
"Dixie" is a kind of shorthand
name for a system and history of

34:48.145 --> 34:55.145
oppression in this poem,
and the very jauntiness and

34:55.152 --> 35:03.932
pride of a colloquial name like
Dixie is played off of,

35:03.929 --> 35:09.839
here, the melancholy and grief
of the context.

35:09.840 --> 35:14.340
That phrase "way down," that
seems innocuous too,

35:14.341 --> 35:20.061
but isn't it resonant as it is
repeated and as we feel our way

35:20.061 --> 35:23.051
into the poem?
It's formulaic,

35:23.054 --> 35:27.924
but it suggests that we're
going, that this poem happens,

35:27.922 --> 35:34.292
somewhere deep and dark;
somewhere away, down;

35:34.289 --> 35:38.849
somewhere in the heart,
in the heart of this system of

35:38.851 --> 35:43.161
oppression;
but also, as it will turn out,

35:43.157 --> 35:48.147
in "the heart of me," as the
poem develops it.

35:48.150 --> 35:53.450
Here, the mere phrase,
"Way Down South in Dixie" and

35:53.452 --> 35:58.432
the mention of that name,
calling up the tune,

35:58.427 --> 36:04.817
summons a kind of a history of
oppression that would occlude

36:04.822 --> 36:11.332
the kind of story that Hughes
wants to bring forward and tell

36:11.326 --> 36:15.756
here.
The minstrel phrase is taken up

36:15.757 --> 36:22.337
by here a speaker who suffers,
who is oppressed by this system

36:22.343 --> 36:27.203
of oppression,
and she uses it to make her own

36:27.202 --> 36:31.382
music.
As in other Hughes poems,

36:31.378 --> 36:38.428
repetition – the use of the
refrain--makes everything that

36:38.432 --> 36:41.662
happens seem inevitable.

36:41.659 --> 36:49.409
It evokes here repeated
actions, a kind of history of

36:49.406 --> 36:55.396
repeated acts.
In general, in the case of

36:55.404 --> 37:01.804
refrains, they function in a
variety of ways.

37:01.800 --> 37:07.750
A refrain that comes last in a
verse unit would seem to convey

37:07.746 --> 37:12.126
the idea that,
well, somehow things always end

37:12.132 --> 37:15.382
this way.
Here, what we have is an

37:15.379 --> 37:18.759
instance of what we would call
anaphora;

37:18.760 --> 37:28.470
that is, a refrain used to
initiate a unit of verse.

37:28.469 --> 37:33.169
And the refrain is the first
line of these stanzas,

37:33.165 --> 37:38.795
and it seems to suggest that
this kind of story always begins

37:38.801 --> 37:42.371
the same way,
"Way Down in Dixie."

37:42.369 --> 37:45.799
This is the way into everything
that's experienced through the

37:45.797 --> 37:47.537
poem, everything that's said.

37:47.539 --> 37:51.909
The parenthesis that comes
then, repeated in the second

37:51.914 --> 37:56.534
line of each of these stanzas,
functions in an interesting

37:56.531 --> 37:58.221
way.
It suggests,

37:58.224 --> 38:03.274
I think, that what is being
said in them is a kind of aside

38:03.273 --> 38:07.803
or some kind of interior
reflection or soliloquy,

38:07.800 --> 38:13.200
perhaps a voice that must be
kept inside.

38:13.199 --> 38:20.019
Does that first phrase,
"Break the heart of me," refer

38:20.017 --> 38:26.317
to the girl, to her lynched
lover, or to the poet,

38:26.321 --> 38:29.281
reflecting on both?

38:29.280 --> 38:35.300
Probably the answer is all
three, held together in a system

38:35.295 --> 38:37.365
of identification.

38:37.369 --> 38:41.349
That phrase,
"the heart of me," is resonant.

38:41.349 --> 38:46.309
It is what holds these three
together, a kind of shared

38:46.314 --> 38:49.314
heart.
It refers to the "heart,"

38:49.314 --> 38:53.124
meaning emotion,
feeling, probably pride.

38:53.119 --> 38:57.199
But the phrase also suggests
simply the center:

38:57.199 --> 39:01.279
the heart of me,
myself, my identity.

39:01.280 --> 39:07.440
"They," "They hung my black
young lover / to a cross roads

39:07.436 --> 39:12.096
tree";
"they" is superbly vague,

39:12.104 --> 39:18.804
impersonal, plural,
formulaic, dehumanized;

39:18.800 --> 39:26.180
evoking a mob,
a generalized body.

39:26.179 --> 39:29.889
Then there's that phrase,
"a cross roads tree."

39:29.889 --> 39:32.429
There are a lot of suggestions
in it.

39:32.429 --> 39:36.079
First of all,
it evokes the tree of the

39:36.076 --> 39:38.376
cross, Christ's cross.

39:38.380 --> 39:42.170
Then the cross is also a figure
for, I think,

39:42.168 --> 39:47.158
the intersection of white and
black, as it is in the little

39:47.161 --> 39:50.951
poem called "Cross," on the page
before;

39:50.950 --> 39:53.390
you could consult that.

39:53.389 --> 40:01.099
And then, the crossroads is one
of the central recurrent scenes

40:01.095 --> 40:05.415
of the blues.
It's where Robert Johnson,

40:05.419 --> 40:09.489
the bluesman,
was said to have made his pact

40:09.487 --> 40:14.127
with the devil.
It is the place where choices

40:14.130 --> 40:20.720
are made, where crisis occurs in
a wandering and displaced life.

40:20.719 --> 40:24.189
That second verse,
"Way Down South in Dixie /

40:24.193 --> 40:28.613
bruised body high in air / I
asked the white Lord Jesus /

40:28.613 --> 40:33.743
what was the use of prayer";
now the parenthesis holds in it

40:33.744 --> 40:38.204
a kind of brutal image,
something horrifying that must

40:38.197 --> 40:40.127
be set off slightly.

40:40.130 --> 40:44.340
The body is bruised,
it shows the marks of beating,

40:44.336 --> 40:47.446
of suffering,
in advance of murder.

40:47.449 --> 40:52.869
It's lifted high in air,
not in honor or tribute.

40:52.869 --> 40:58.819
Rather, to be lifted in this
way is to lose all agency,

40:58.824 --> 41:03.684
to be made lifeless;
all of this presented as a kind

41:03.680 --> 41:08.150
of syntactic fragment in the
poem, not yet integrated into

41:08.149 --> 41:10.119
the poem,
so to speak,

41:10.115 --> 41:14.555
or it may not yet be integrated
into consciousness.

41:14.559 --> 41:20.019
The final verse--we'll go back
to it and interpret that image.

41:20.019 --> 41:24.229
Here Jesus is white:
in a sense a pure,

41:24.225 --> 41:28.755
untouched, redeemed;
but also because he is,

41:28.757 --> 41:32.677
it seems, a representative of
white culture,

41:32.677 --> 41:37.507
a kind of mediator the girl
would seek to address.

41:37.510 --> 41:42.940
The girl doesn't pray to him
but rather asks a question,

41:42.944 --> 41:48.084
a question about the use of
prayer, and Jesus notably

41:48.082 --> 41:52.602
doesn't answer.
In addition to repetition,

41:52.595 --> 41:58.565
song-form poems like this are
made out of omission and jumps

41:58.574 --> 42:04.254
from one stanza to another,
from one line to another.

42:04.250 --> 42:10.710
And one thing omitted here is
any sense of Jesus' reply.

42:10.710 --> 42:15.670
Or perhaps the answer comes in
the form of that final verse,

42:15.668 --> 42:20.368
which repeats the first lines
of the poem – this is the

42:20.374 --> 42:25.504
truth that it arises from and
returns to – and it gives us a

42:25.501 --> 42:29.891
memorable image.
The lover has become

42:29.892 --> 42:35.742
depersonalized and abstract,
merely a shadow.

42:35.739 --> 42:40.779
He has now, though,
with his abstraction become

42:40.777 --> 42:46.687
love itself: the girl's love,
perhaps Christ's love.

42:46.690 --> 42:52.880
And "Love is a naked shadow /
on a gnarled and naked tree."

42:52.880 --> 42:58.290
Here the repetition of "naked"
is suggestive.

42:58.289 --> 43:04.269
It evokes the man's nakedness,
his helplessness and exposure.

43:04.269 --> 43:10.009
There's also a sense of
revelation, of coming to the

43:10.005 --> 43:14.025
naked truth.
And this is something very

43:14.029 --> 43:19.209
different from the nakedness
that Yeats boasts of in his

43:19.211 --> 43:20.061
poems.

43:20.060 --> 43:25.370


43:25.369 --> 43:33.299
The blues is also about
laughter, and it is laughter

43:33.299 --> 43:40.139
that, I guess,
I would like to end with while

43:40.140 --> 43:51.200
we have a few moments left,
laughter that comes out of the

43:51.201 --> 43:58.901
endurance of hardship and
suffering.

43:58.900 --> 44:03.140
This is a young Hughes laughing
and here's a later one.

44:03.139 --> 44:09.769
And why don't we end with a
later poem, and that's called

44:09.765 --> 44:16.385
"Life is Fine," on page 699,
twenty years after the poems

44:16.391 --> 44:19.351
I've been discussing.

44:19.349 --> 44:29.079
It, too, has a song form and a
blues singer speaking to us:

44:29.079 --> 44:34.939
I went down to the river
[and think of how many rivers

44:34.944 --> 44:38.364
appear in these poems]
I set down on the bank.

44:38.360 --> 44:42.450
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

44:42.450 --> 44:44.660
I came up once and hollered!

44:44.660 --> 44:47.390
I came up twice and cried!

44:47.389 --> 44:49.859
If that water hadn't a-been so
cold

44:49.860 --> 44:52.380
I might've sunk and died.

44:52.380 --> 44:54.730
But it was
Cold in that water!

44:54.730 --> 45:00.820
It was cold!
Suicide is contemplated and

45:00.821 --> 45:05.471
tried, not quite,
because when the singer gets on

45:05.465 --> 45:11.845
top of the building he decides,
"But it was / high up there!

45:11.849 --> 45:17.029
/ It was high!" and he's
not about to jump.

45:17.030 --> 45:18.970
Since I'm still here
living,

45:18.970 --> 45:22.130
I guess I will live on.

45:22.130 --> 45:27.470
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.

45:27.469 --> 45:30.909
[Not for love,
because that would mean dying.]

45:30.910 --> 45:34.360
You may hear me holler,
You may see me cry--

45:34.360 --> 45:38.470
But I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

45:38.470 --> 45:41.920
Life is fine!
Fine as wine!

45:41.920 --> 45:47.620
Life is fine!
Well, I think rather than say

45:47.623 --> 45:51.533
anything else,
I'll stop right on time and

45:51.530 --> 45:54.770
promise to return on Wednesday.

45:54.769 --> 45:57.999
We'll talk about William Carlos
Williams.