Friday, February 03, 2012

Poetry Friday--Happy Birthday Langston Hughes!

February 1 marked the 110th anniversary of the birth of Langston Hughes. What a perfect excuse to share a Hughes poem (as if one needed an excuse)!
Me and My Song

Black
As the gentle night
Black
As the kind and quiet night
Black
As the deep productive earth
Body
Out of Africa
Strong and black
As iron
First smelted in
Africa
Song
Out of Africa
Deep and mellow song
Rich
As the black earth
Strong
As black iron
Kind
As the black night
My Song
From the dark lips
Of Africa
Deep
As the rich earth
Beautiful
As the black night
Strong
As the first iron
Black
Out of Africa
Me and my
Song

from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes [811 HUG]
Stop by The Iris Chronicles for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up.

Photo courtesy Yale University.

3 comments:

Tara said...

We just concluded our unit on Langston Hughes with this poem - so beautiful!

Julie Larios said...

It's the repetition here that gets to me and begins to hum and makes me feel like the poem becomes song - it's beautiful. Thanks for posting it, Diane.

Diane Mayr said...

I especially like the combination of black with gentleness and kindness. Too often black implies anger, this is a nice change.