This celebratory edition of the classic poetry collection reminds us
of Hughes's stunning achievement, speaking directly, intimately, and
powerfully of Black experiences at a time when Black voices were newly
being heard in American literature. - With an introduction by poet
Kevin Young.
Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem) Huges writes, "I am a
Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my
Africa."
As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the
original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz
rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries
bitterly from the heart of his race...Always, however, his stanzas are
subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an
essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature
darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with
precocious confidence and clarity.
In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young
suggests that Hughes, who was 24 at the time of the original
publication, from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing,
and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt
Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it.
We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and
the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America,"
but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as
deeply. "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes
offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the
too-rough fingers / Of the world."
