Harlem Renaissance Poets

The African American cultural explosion that happened in the 1920s through the 1930s in the area of New York City was due to the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a period during which black artists broke with the traditional dialectal works and imitating white writers to explore black culture and express pride in their race. This was expressed in literature, music, art, in addition to other forms of artistic expression. There were many writers that contributed to the rise of Harlem Renaissance and which many of them remain well-known and respected to this day. The two famous Harlem Renaissance writers I will explore are Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

Being one of the most well-Known Harlem Renaissance writers is Langston Hughes. Mr. Hughes work was distinctly African American in content and details of his experience as a black man, but at the same time his writings were very accessible to readers of all races. Mr. Hughes was one of the first black writers in American to actually earn a living from writing. Langston Hughes poetry became an important tool for African Americans to use discuss their struggles with racial equality and tolerance.

Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist for the most part but she is associated with two places and that's Harlem and Eatonville Florida which was the first incorporated African American town in the United States. Publishing short stories during the Harlem Renaissance era like "Spunk" and "Sweat". Zora Hurston grew up in Eatonville Florida which was the center of her work in her writing she often use characters, vernacular and legends based on life in her town. To Zora Eatonville would become a utopia, glorified in her stories as a place black Americans could live as they desire, independent of white society and all its ways. Also, her work included her interest and experience as an anthropologist who tracked folk culture in the Caribbean and among other places. Just like Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston was quite famous in the 1930s but unlike Mr. Hughes she fell from the lime light.

The Characteristics of Harlem Renaissance Poetry was based on a literary and cultural movement which begin in the 20th century. The movement was a cultural explosion for African Americans that were expressed through essays, songs, theatrical pieces, novels and poetry. The primary themes used in poetry during the Harlem Renaissance was; intent, focus and themes, musical themes and poetic influences.

Langston Hughes' poem the "The Negro Speaks Rivers"

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