Harlem Renaissance Poems
of his age,” (“Harlem Renaissance: American Literature and Art”). Implicit in Cullen’s poetic styles and formats was the belief in a blended identity, and yet the poem “Simon the Cyrenian Speaks” shows that Cullen indeed did struggle with the double consciousness. Langston Hughes took a different approach than Cullen did, in terms of poetic style, subject matter, and approaches to race. Contrary to Cullen, Hughes believed “black poets should create a distinctive Negro art, combating what he called the “urge within the race toward whiteness,” (“Harlem Renaissance: American Literature and Art” 1). In Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes resolves… Continue Reading...
