Harlem Renaissance Poems

The Harlem renaissance was filled with many emotional art that depicted hardship but also resilience. One of these poems that capture the unfortunate hardship of African Americans, is the poem Harlem Shadows By Claude McKay. In his poem he conveys one of the themes of the Harlem Renaissance using imagery, ethos, and repetition to portray the image in our head of the Harlem Renaissance.

The first poet I chose from the Harlem Renaissance was the American poet, Countee Cullen This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African Americans. (Brown, 2012) The work, Yet Do I Marvel, took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit. The poem is stark and makes reference to Sisyphus and speaks of how life is a struggle up a never ending stair. It speaks to God as if to wonder why, knowing that God is benevolent he does not stop the unreasoning actions of brutes against, “flesh that mirrors him”, meaning the black race. (Brown, 2012) This line is important as it shows that the black consciousness is coming to recognition of their own worth taken

“What happens to a dream deferred?” is the opening statement of Harlem that grabs the attention of everyone who is reading this phenomenal poem. Of the two poems listed in this essay, this opening statement is more attention-grabbing and is a fantastic hook to being with. Harlem and Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now, are ideally comparable and contrastable. The meanings of the poems and the authors of the poems are some topics that are different in these poems. The style of the poems and length of the poems are the other topics that are the same and are comparable to this subject. Altogether, these two pieces of literature are actually intriguing and somewhat interesting.

Langston Hughes was a successful African-American poet of the Harlem renaissance in the 20th century. Hughes' had a simple and cultured writing style. "Harlem" is filled with rhythm, jazz, blues, imagery, and evokes vivid images within the mind. The poem focuses on what could happen to deferred dreams. Hughes' aim is to make it clear that if you postpone your dreams you might not get another chance to attain it--so take those dreams and run. Each question associates with negative effects of deferred dreams. The imagery from the poem causes the reader to be pulled in by the writer's words.

Starting around 1918, and progressing through the 1920s and 30s, a section of New York City called Harlem began to be the center of a group of talented African American artists, composers, poets, and dancers. This period of time, with all the literary works, music, art, and poetry coming out of the Black experience, was called the New Negro Renaissance, or the Harlem Renaissance. This was a time just after World War I when there was again hope hope that Whites and Blacks could coexist and appreciate the gifts each had to give, particularly in the arts. What united participants was their sense of taking part in a common goal and their commitment to giving artistic expression to the African American experience (Watson 1995, introduction, 1-14).

During the 1920?s, a ?flowering of creativity,? as many have called it, began to sweep the nation. The movement, now known as ?The Harlem Renaissance,? caught like wildfire. Harlem, a part of Manhattan in New York City, became a hugely successful showcase for African American talent. Starting with black literature, the Harlem Renaissance quickly grew to incredible proportions. W.E.B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes, along with many other writers, experienced incredible popularity, respect, and success. Art, music, and photography from blacks also flourished, resulting in many masterpieces in all mediums. New ideas began to take wings among circles of black intellectuals. The

taste, hear and touch. ' Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun' this

Many assume that Blues and Jazz were the only musical influences that impacted the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, with the pursuit for heritage and identity, many aspects of African culture influenced Renaissance poetry musically. However, focus also needs to be placed on more controversial topics, such as religion and gender, as poets challenged oppression.

Poetry is something that affects everyone that reads it. If you find the kind that you like then you only tend to read that type, and sometimes that is all a person needs because that certain type of poetry is so connected to them. In the Harlem Renaissance era there were a lot of poets who brought African American voices into the mainstream of American society. This is the type of poetry that really touched people and pushed them to read more poetry like it. Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton and Colleen McElroy were all poets that wrote about what being an African American in the United States was like and what they had to deal with throughout their lives. None of these were happy poems. They all pointed out the realities of what they had

Bumanglag 1 Elizen Bumanglag Ms. Pyzel Expository Writing 2 5 March, 2018 The Harlem Renaissance Do songs of hymns really give people something to hope for? During the Harlem Renaissance, it did. The poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing” which later became a hymn was a song of hope and faith for the African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance was a wonderful allotment of advancement for the black poets and writers of the 1920s and early ‘30s. I see the Harlem Renaissance as a time where people gather together and express their work throughout the world for everyone to see the brilliance and talent the black descendants harness.

Metaphors are used to compare the dancers voice to the sound of “blended flutes” The phrase “blown by black” makes use of alliteration in the sonnet. The sonnet begins with the use of imagery to set’s-up the scene of an applauding audience, who is taken by this dancer that appears at first glance “perfect, half-clothed body sway (line 2). The descriptions used to depict the dancer are words of admiration that describes the way she looks, the movement of her body and the sound of her voice. Imagery is used in the poem to reflect the changes of pace or tone between the first and second stanza of the sonnet. The first uses of imagery represents a delightful that one can imagine, a description of the dancers voice us represented as “blended flutes” and she moved like a “proudly-swaying palm”.

Overall, the speaker in this poem seems to feel great optimism for America in the future, because African Americans will one day be treated fairly by the whites, and will thrive as a

Harlem Renaissance was a time of social awareness and enlightenment among African-Americans. After the Civil War, black people became free economically and politically, however, Jim Crow Laws were put in place to limit the movement of blacks’ rights and to enforce segregation. Thousands of African-Americans flocked to the North and settled in Harlem. Shaping a unique African-American culture, this movement was lead by many black artists, musicians, intellectuals, and poets. In the poems during this time period, African-American poets depict their lives, struggles, and their racial pride.

The great philosopher Plato once orated: “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. PBS defines the the Harlem Renaissance a “Cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars.” Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”Authors such as Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Colleen McElroy explore their cultural heritage through hard-hitting poetry.