I've known rivers:
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.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Notes
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=1553
Recorded in 1955 - Langston Hughes recites.
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The Negro speaks of Rivers
From guest Paddy Locke (contact)
WOW! What a GEM. It's wonderful to read and digest, and ABSOLUTELY wonderful for teachers to use for anything in English. -
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From guest andrew brant (contact)
GREAT POEM I JUST LOVED IT IT WAS SO INSPIRING, I THINK I MIGHT JUST WRITE A POEM -
hi
From guest Brandon (contact)
this piece was a very inspiring work of art, it taught me new meaning to life itself. sincerely, Brandon -
This is an Excellent piece...quite wonderful...I'm Speechless so I will end it with that...much love Raneika
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The title explains the piece. I really don't have anything to say about the piece other than that, because the title speaks for the piece. Sort of redundant in a way.
It's a good piece, but that's basically it.
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(comments from repetitious/posted poem of same title and text)
diamond on May 02, 3:58 p.m.
Verdict: Soul Stirring
Love makes the world go around, 1505 critiques. said:
Langston Hughes is without a doubt one of my favorite poets. His writing has the power to stir. His writing lift me up and take me to a place where i've never been but has always longed to be. I admire him and reading his poetry has been a great influcence in my life. Avril (reply?)
losergirl14 on May 18, 8:26 p.m.
express yourself the way YOU want to, 136 critiques. said:
same here. i LOVE his writing.!!man, you rock.
RIP
-clare- (reply?)
astralshepherd on Aug 16, 7:09 p.m.
Poems- evocative, evolving, ever rising: Elation, 3286 critiques. said:
Of all his work, this is my favorite. To me, this has an internal strength and a majestic dynamic nobility. It is as if he is pointing to the injustice of slavery and at the same time showing a strength that transcends the injustices. Oh, i see anger here to be sure, but its subdued by the muddiness of river, men’s soul’s, dark and light. ~richard (reply?)
Edited on Sep 29, 6:46 because ''. -
Hughes's first poem, published in The Crisis in June, 1921, attracted the attention it did precisely because its author revealed the acute sensitivity to the racial past that Garvey, with his racial romanticism, was then trying to instill in the minds of all. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" heralded the existence of a mystic union of Negroes in every country and every age. It pushed their history back to the creation of the world, and credited them with possessing a wisdom no less profound than that of the greatest rivers of civilization that humanity had ever known, from the Euphrates to the Nile and from the Congo to the Mississippi. . . .
From Black Poets of the United States. Copyright © 1973 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
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Readers rarely notice that if the soul of the Negro in this poem goes back to the Euphrates, it goes back to a pre-"racial" dawn and a geography far from Africa that is identified with neither blackness nor whiteness--a geography at the time of Hughes's writing considered the cradle of all the world's civilizations and possibly the location of the Garden of Eden. Thus, even in this poem about the depth of the Negro's soul Hughes avoids racial essentialism while nonetheless stressing the existential, racialized conditions of black and modern identity.
From The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White. Copyright © 1995 by the President and Board of Fellows of Harvard College.
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When the Euphrates flows from eastern Turkey southeast and southwest into the Tigris, it recalls the rise as well as the fall of the Roman Empire. For over two thousand years the water helped delimit that domain. Less so did the Congo, which south of the Sahara demarcates the natural boundaries between white and Black Africa. The latter empties into the Atlantic ocean; the Nile flows northward from Uganda into the Mediterranean; in the United States the Mississippi River flows southeast from north central Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. Whether north or south, east or west, "River" signifies the fertility as well as the dissemination of life in concentric half-circles. The liquid, as the externalized form of the contemplative imagination, has both depth and flow. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" reclaims the origins in Africa of both physical and spiritual humanity.
From The Art and Language of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1989 by The University Press of Kentucky.
Hope these references help.
Andrew -
I would like some feedback on this poem. I would like to better understand the deeper meanings within it.
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