Making It New: 1900–1945 491rivers,” its narrator reveals, “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.”
The poem then goes on to describe some of the rivers with which “the Negro,” or
rather his spirit and his race, have been associated – the Euphrates, Congo, Nile, and
the Mississippi – before returning, like the river, to its beginnings: “My soul has
grown deep like the rivers.” As with Whitman in some of his more elegiac works
(“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” for instance), Hughes uses a sonorous,
flowing line here to create a sense of meditation, and incremental repetition
(“I bathed ... I built ... I looked ... I heard”) to suggest the tones of the prophet, the
tongue of the seer. The vision unfolded is at once accurately historical and elemental,
mythical, since the rivers, as they are named in order, recall some of the civilizations
the black race has helped build, while rehearsing the ancient idea that the same deep
forces run through the body of the earth and the bodies of men and woman. Knowing
the rise and fall of cultures, black people have known the tale of time; they have seen
once proud civilizations pass away and will doubtless see others follow in due course.
Participating in the flow of waters “ancient as the world,” however, they also know
something of the story of eternity: through their veins and those of the world course
the same ceaseless currents, endowing them with both strength, the capacity to
endure, and a kind of magic and majesty. “Consider me,” one of Hughes’s other
dramatic voices asks (in a poem actually entitled “Consider Me”), “Descended also /
From the / Mystery.” Hughes’s poems are always asking the reader to consider this,
the mysterious essences of black life as well as its jazzy surfaces. As in the best black
music there is energy, sensuality, humor, certainly, but also that unique quality, soul.
Other poets roughly contemporary with Hughes shared a similar desire to voice
the separateness of black culture. Notable among these were Sterling A. Brown
(1901–1989) and Gwendolyn Bennett (1902–1981). Born in Texas, Bennett became
a close friend and associate of Hughes and Hurston, Thurman and Countee Cullen
when she moved to New York City. She collaborated with them on Fire!!, wrote
poetry that was published in Crisis, Opportunity, and other magazines, and became
involved in the Federal Writers’ Project. Her poetry is lyrical and intensely personal,
and often preoccupied with the primary facts of love (“Advice” (1927)) and death
(“Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas” (1927)). But a poem like “Heritage”
(1923) makes clear her fundamental commitment to composing a determinately
black verse. “I want to hear the chanting / Around a heathen fire / Of a strange black
race,” she declares here. “I want to feel the surging / Of my sad people’s soul / Hidden
by a minstrel smile.” In turn, “To Usward” (1924) reveals a sense of solidarity with
other black writers who shared a similar commitment. A celebration of all those who
have “songs to sing” – and, in particular, songs “Of jungle heat and fires” and “Negro
lullabies” – it was written in honor of Jessie Fauset on the publication of There Is
Confusion, a novel that uses the theme of the “tragic mulatta” to explore the problems
of black women. Unlike Bennett, Brown enjoyed widespread recognition during his
lifetime. An influential scholar and anthologist, he helped shape perception of
African-American literature and subjects through such works as Negro Poetry and
Drama (1938), The Negro in American Fiction (1938), and The Negro Caravan (1944).GGray_c04.indd 491ray_c 04 .indd 491 8 8/1/2011 7:54:04 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 04 AM