We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line. ~ Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes overcame the censorship and blacklisting that plagued many of America’s African-American authors in the pre-Civil Rights era to become not only the voice of his generation, but perhaps one of the best documentarians of life as an African-American in the early-to-mid twentieth century. With his prose, plays, and especially his poems, Hughes continues to teach other cultures what it means to be an African-American, which reflecting for those of his own culture the qualities that make them unique.

James Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother until reuniting with his mother and stepfather at the age of 13. Hughes began writing poetry as a teenager, and although he attended Columbia University for a time, he left to travel the world, working an assortment of jobs.

In 1926, Hughes’ saw his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published. He continued his education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, continuing to write, winning the Harmon Gold Medal for literature in 1930 for his first novel Not Without Laughter.

Hughes relocated to New York City, where he became associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African-American writers and artists that included authors such as Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay. His writing – which included poetry, novels and short story, prose and plays – reflected the excitement that both he and the other writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance found growing in the African-American community in Harlem, while also recognizing the roadblocks that still stood in their paths. He celebrated cultural elements unique to African-American culture, such as jazz, while also preserving African-American dialects in his work.

By the 1950s and 1960s, Langston Hughes was among the most celebrated authors of his generation. His poems, in particular, were well-read and received, becoming standard reading in high school curriculum. At his death in 1967, Hughes was considered the leading light not only of the Harlem Renaissance, but of American poetry, and as such, his home at East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, was granted the status of a landmark, the street itself renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”

Poems by Langston Hughes:

I, Too, Sing America

Theme for English B

The Weary Blues

My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. ~ Thomas Hardy

A failed novelist turned poet, Thomas Hardy could be called a writer’s writer, his novels and verses read more by other writers than by the public, especially during his lifetime, when the frank sexuality of his novels and the unsentimental nature of his poetry rankled the prevailing Victorian tastes of the day.

Born in Dorsetshire, England, in 1840, Thomas Hardy was the son of a master stonemason and contract builder and a mother who loved poetry and French novels. When his schooling was finished, Hardy was, in the family tradition, apprenticed to an architect. He furthered his architectural career by moving to London at the age of 22.

It was also in London that Hardy began to show an interest in literature and writing, attending classes at King’s College, visiting galleries, plays, and operas, and beginning to write his own poems, centered around the rural life he’d known in Dorset. In 1867 he returned to Dorset to continue work as an architect, and in 1874, he married Emma Lavinia Gifford, who encouraged his writing.

Soon after his marriage, Hardy, upon encouragement from novelist George Meredith, saw his first novel, Far From the Maddening Crowd, published to moderate success. Hardy abandoned work as an architect and dedicated himself to writing novels.

His success at writing novels was interrupted by the publication of his two best-known novels Tess of the D’Urbervillesand Jude the Obscure. Both novels were deemed obscene and were denounced from the pulpit in both Great Britain and American. The public outrage about the frank sexuality and violence of these novels drove Hardy to abandon fiction and return to poetry.

Hardy’s first published poetry was a group of poems that he had composed 30 years previously. He continued to publish poetry throughout the rest of his life, eventually publishing eight volumes. Like his novels, Hardy’s poetry, too, broke from the Victorian mores of the day, eschewing religion and sentimentality for realism. However, Hardy’s poetry was marginally better received than his fiction, possibly a reflection of the fact that his poetry was published late in life, as the Victorian era gave way to the less restrictive Edwardian era.

Thomas Hardy died in 1928, his poetry and novels alike ripe for rediscovery in the Jazz Age. He is now one of the most-read and best-known novelists and poets of the Victorian era.

Poems by Thomas Hardy:

Hap

The Darkling Thrush

The Man He Killed

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.”

“I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks… And think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries… Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don’t bother about sentences …”

“Poets are Damned … but See with the Eyes of Angels.”

Poet Allen Ginsberg was as loquacious on the subject of poetry as he was in the poetry itself, spouting streams of stream of consciousness words about poetry almost as often as capturing poetry on paper.

Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Ginsberg was the son of a school-teacher father and a Communist Party member mother. Ginsberg’s childhood was marked by the mental illness of his mother, an illness that eventually led to her commitment to an institution.

Ginsberg graduated from high school in 1943, and went on to Columbia University on a scholarship.
Among his professors at Columbia were literary critics Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren; however, Ginsberg’s poetry was more inspired by his group of friends that included Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, John Clellon Holmes, and William S. Burroughs.

Along with Burroughs and Kerouac, Ginsberg would come to be known as a writer of the “Beat Generation,” a group that rebelled against the societal and literary bourgeois that typified the 1950s.

Ginsberg left New York City in the 1950s to relocate in San Francisco. Inspired by the long, verbal poetry of friend Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg wrote a long poem titled “Howl.” He read the poem aloud at the Six Gallery in San Francisco to an appreciative audience that included poets Michael McClure and Philip Whalen. Writer Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also ran the City Lights Book Store and related publishing interested, expressed a desire to publish the poem.

“Howl and Other Poems” was published in 1956 to great success – and controversy. The police arrested Ferlinghetti and employee Shigeyoshi Murao on charges of publishing and selling an obscene and indecent book – “Howl” being the offending book. The trial, which commenced in 1957, ended with a judge’s decision that the book was not obscene and did have “redeeming social value.”

“Howl” would be the book he would best be known for, but Allen Ginsberg continued to write and stay active in liberal politics throughout the rest of his life. He died in 1997 from liver cancer.

Some of Ginsberg’s best-known poems include:

Excerpt from “Howl”:

First Party at Ken Kesey’s With the Hell’s Angels:”

During the mid-twentieth century, there was no poet more beloved in the United States than Robert Frost. Considered the unofficial poet laureate of the nation, Frost’s poems were more widely read than almost any other poet’s work, his poetry was part of every English course in America’s curriculum, and not surprisingly, his poetry was among the most familiar lines among most of America.

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in California to a journalist father, William Frost, and a former schoolteacher, Isabella. After his father’s death when he was an adolescent, Frost and his mother relocated to New England to live with family. He would remain a resident of New England most of his life.

Although his grandfather saw to it that Frost received an excellent education, he was an indifferent student, attending both Dartmouth and Harvard without earning a degree. He held a number of jobs to support himself, among them textile mill worker, cobbler, Latin teacher, and farmer.

Despite his various careers – plus marriage and children – Frost dedicated himself to his poetry. It was not, however, well-received in the early stages of his writing career. The Atlantic Monthly rejected his work on at least one occasion.

For a time, Frost and his family relocated to England. This proved fortuitous for his poetry; at nearly 40 years of age, his first poetry collection, A Boy’s Will was finally published, to international acclaim.

Despite his success in England, Frost returned again to New England, teaching, writing, and co-founding the Bread Loaf School of writing in Vermont. He continued to write and publish his poetry to eager audiences, gaining a reputation as one of America’s finest, most popular poets. He was honored by the U.S. Senate, the American Academy of Poets, and was a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal and the Edward MacDowell medal. He traveled throughout the world, sharing his poetry with distinguished leaders, considered an American treasure.

However, Frost’s success came along with disappointments. By the time of his death in 1963, he’d outlived his wife and four of his five children, several of whom suffered from mental health issues, and one of which committed suicide. The disappointments may have been great, at his death, Frost was considered one of the cornerstones of American poetry.

The popularity of Frost’s poetry has not dimmed in the years since his death. Among his most popular poems are:

The Road Not Taken

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Mending Wall

Poet, essayist, Transcendentalist and American literary giant, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetry is still taught as assiduously in the 21st Century as it was during the 19th Century.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. The son of a Unitarian minister who died when he was eight years of age, Ralph Waldo Emerson began writing as a child.
After attending the Boston Latin School, where he studied the classics, Emerson matriculated to Harvard College, graduating in 1821.

Making his living as a teacher, Emerson began publishing his writing, although much of it was in the form of religious essays. He entered Harvard Divinity School in 1825, already beginning to question his own beliefs.

Emerson became an ordained Unitarian minister, and in 1829, married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died of tuberculosis just a few years into the marriage, causing considerable religious doubt for Emerson. However, by 1835 he was remarried to Lydia Jackson, who would bear Emerson four children.

Emerson and his second wife settled in Concord, Massachusetts, where they opened their home to many authors, poets and intellectuals, including both Nathaniel Hawthorne and close Emerson friend Henry David Thoreau, who would build his Walden Pond home on Emerson’s land. Emerson and Thoreau, among others, became known as the Transcendentalists, who attempted to find spirituality not just in religious forms but in the natural world around them.

Emerson had been writing and lecturing for several years when, in 1838, he gave the “Divinity School Address” at Harvard that broke with religion and resulted in his being called an atheist. His break with the church complete, Emerson began the journal The Dial along with Margaret Fuller, which served to publish essays and poets chiefly by the Transcendentalists.

It was in 1847 that Emerson published his collected poems. However, he devoted much of his time to essays and lecturing in America and Europe rather than poetry, and it would be 20 years before another collection of his poetry was released.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Emerson would continue to write and to lecture for both students and admirers alike. He died in 1882 at the age of 78, his death attributable to pneumonia brought on by a cold.

Although he was known primarily and essayist and lecturer during his lifetime, since his death Emerson’s poetry has superceded his essays and lectures to become what his is most known for. Among his best-known poems are:

Celestial Love

Ode to Beauty