"[The position] offers someone as a spokesperson for literature and poetry..."" ... She also championed children's poetry and jazz with poetry events."" ... Dove says that she spent most of her time as Poet Laureate " educating young people in matters of poetry and bringing real poetry into real life... So by helping introduce people to poetry and widening the audience for poetry, I do think my term has served a more serious purpose."" ... (Past poet laureate Consultant in poetry). ...

• Word Count: 1934
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Music, poetry, jazz, blues and musical theater were flourishing for the African American in Harlem. ... (Haskins 48) Hughes had and still has a great influence on poetry. Hughes" poetry was a reflection of the African-American culture and Harlem. ... He did not only write poetry, but that is what made him famous. ... Hughes continued his career publishing many books of poetry. ...

• Word Count: 1984
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

He wrote many books filled with his amazing poetry, including "Sympathy" and "We Wear Masks"(Miller 392). ... He has fallen out of racial views that seem rude today, but he is still recognized as a skilled writer of southern black poetry. ... He seeks to redeem the darker brother throughout his works of poetry (Mead 132). ... He used his dialect to convey character in his poetry. America and Dunbar gained national praise for his dialect verses in some of his poetry. ...

• Word Count: 1623
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Throughout Maya Angelou's poetry and autobiographies, it is evident that social obstacles and crude stereotypes did not suppress her motivation or desire to succeed in a world where she was initially destined to fail. ... (Bloom1 199) Although Maya's autobiographies did describe her great struggle from rags to riches, they were not as in depth and good at reflecting her motivation and determination to overcome them like her poetry does. Maya's first collection of poetry, Just Give Me A Cool Drink Of Water Fore' I Diiie, was published in 1971. ... Her motivation ...

• Word Count: 1347
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Throughout she had a long career that included different works from poetry, screenplays for television programs and film, plays, directing acting, as well as public speaking. She is most recognized for her career in poetry, whereby her style of writing was directed to self-empowerment, and to encourage people to rise over all odds and take personal pride of one's identity. ... Apart from being inspired, Angelou has inspired many writers through her work, primarily poetry. ... Despite the recognition and vast success of her poetry, critics of Angelou claim that Angelou would not have infl...

• Word Count: 1524
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He introduced a new form to write poetry: "the blues form in his poetry places him in the modernist tradition" (Rampersad). For the first time he held two forms of expression, writing and music, to express himself in his poetry. ... Hughes interpreted his feelings and how the people were living in the South; this was the first step in the resurrection of black poetry. ... Furthermore, Langston Hughes loved Harlem and described it in his writing but also absorbed the rhythms of the Blues and the Jazz in his poetry. ... By not using adjectives he makes his work more accessible to everyone inte...

• Word Count: 1971
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Hughes wrote in many genres, but he is best known for his poetry in which he disregarded classical forms in favor of musical rhythms and the oral and improvisatory traditions of black culture. http://myhero.com/hero.asp?... Hughes' poetry announced to the world that the streets of black America were culturally rich, vibrant and fiercely poetic. ... From the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s, some 16 black writers published more than 50 volumes of poetry and fiction, The Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed audience. ... Magazines as The Crisis, a monthly journal of the NAACP, and Opportu...

• Word Count: 1518
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

His poetry, spanning five decades from 1926 to 1967, reflected the changing black experience in America, from the Harlem Renaissance to the confused sixties. ... The tone and subject matter of Hughes' poetry can be linked to certain points in history, and his life. ... Although scholars and critics throughout his career dismissed his poetry as too "simple and unlearned,"" his primary audience, the black masses, and even Hughes himself viewed his work as "folk poetry- which was beneath criticism (Rampersad 4-5). ...

• Word Count: 1313
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

After a conflict-filled visit with his father in Mexico, "Langston Hughes returned and began writing poetry of distinction" (Hughes 1). ... Addressed by the author, " Hughes was a pioneer in the poetry-to-jazz movement, perhaps the father of it" (Logan 332). ... Langston Hughes wrote poetry in a way that the reader could hear a blues or jazz beat with almost every verse. ... His funeral like his poetry, was all blues and jazz- (Hughes 2). ...

• Word Count: 1296
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

In 1967 he wrote a book of Black Nationalist poetry, titled "Black Magic." ... He also wrote a lot anti-semitic poetry at the same time. His poetry from that period contains such phrases as, "I got the extermination blues, jewboys."(Amiri Baraka Reader, pg. xxiv) Amiri is all about using poetry as a machine-gun, he once made a comment "we want poems that kill" (Amiri Baraka Reader, pg. xxv). ...

• Word Count: 2297
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

Setting out to write about black Americans, Hughes created a body of work-poetry, fiction, journalism, essays, plays, and song lyrics. ... His passion for jazz affected his approach to poetry. ... Langston Hughes is a man whose poetry holds as much meaning for us today as it did long ago....

• Word Count: 1295
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Wheatley cites in her poetry other people that were also famous for their fights for freedom. ... In addition to using other famous abolitionists and the technique of a double voice, Phillis Wheatley's poetry is filled with references and hidden meanings. ... Wheatley recognized this and used her poetry to reflect her views. ... Her richly composed poetry is reflective of her faith in God and search for salvation in Revolutionary America. ...

• Word Count: 2218
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Were it not for the experiences that these two authors had during their lives many, if not all, of the passion that they put into their poetry would have been lost or compromised. ... In much the same way as Whitman, Langston Hughes" poetry is a product of the environment in which he was raised and the values that he holds. ... Hughes poetry illustrates that whites and blacks recognize the roles that were expected of them in society and at the least, they had acceptance amongst their races, while mulattos in many cases were alone having no clear racial group to identify with. ...

• Word Count: 1893
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography

The ideas of negritude and soul, the governmental issues of Black Power, the brain science of dark fury, are so well known to black people of the sixties that it comes as a stun to understand that Hughes was showing understandable and solid pictures of them in his poetry in the twenties and thirties. ... As an African American composing (and endeavoring to distribute) poetry in the United States just 60 or somewhere in the vicinity years after the end of the Civil War, a period when indications of prejudice-including explicit segregation, brutality, and even lynchings-were still widespread, La...

• Word Count: 1762
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The diverse literary expression of the Harlem Renaissance ranged from the fiction of James Weldon Johnson and the poetry of Claude Mckay which described the reality of black life in America and the struggle for racial identity. ... Also the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the fiction of Charles W. ...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

His goal is to write truly "Negro" poetry without perpetuating racial stereotypes. He is not alone; there are many Black intellectuals during this period crafting art, literature and poetry in ways to express their heritage. ...

• Word Count: 1328
• Approx Pages: 5

It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. ... Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. ... He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred. ...

• Word Count: 1896
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. ... Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. ... He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred. ...

• Word Count: 1930
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

First, in 1922 Claude McKay was the first black writer that published a volume of poetry "Harlem Shadows" by a mainstream national publisher. Second, in 1923 was by Jean Toomer who wrote a novel named "Cane" that had both poetry and prose that was about the life of black Americans in the rural South and urban North. ... Hughes wrote literary types of writing like poetry, plays, short stories, and novels. ...

• Word Count: 2368
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Baldwin wrote novels, poetry, essays and a screenplay in the later years of his life. ... Walter Meserve writes in The Black American Writer: Poetry and Drama, Vol. 2, Baldwin tries to use theatre as a pulpit for his ideas. ...

• Word Count: 1677
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Langston Hughes's poetry could almost be the love song version of Du Bois's collection of essays. ... He believes America can change some day, just like Washington held so much hope in, but he also doesn't believe in sitting back and holding his tongue and just doing field work, but writing poetry, like Du Bois. ...

• Word Count: 1421
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Through Hughes" works that included: poetry, short stories, novels, and political essays, Hughes brought his words to life and educated many people. ... Through these next few pages, the history of Hughes" younger years will be explained, and how they influenced his poetry. ...

• Word Count: 1483
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Walker has had many jobs such as a writer, teacher of black studies, lecturer in literature, distinguished writer in Afro-American studies, professor of literature, lecturer and reader of her own poetry at universities and conferences etc. ... Walker remarked, "writing poetry was a way to celebrate each day that she had not committed suicide" (Kort 225). ...

• Word Count: 2261
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

Harlem Renaissance From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among African Americans occurred in all literary discussions in the lower Manhattan and upper Manhattan sections of New York City, this African American cultural movement became known as "The Negro Move...

• Word Count: 1300
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Hart stated, "He had a most dramatic meeting with his literary idol of the time, Vachel Lindesayhe had a chat with Lindsay and his wife, and was given a gift of Amy Lowell's John Keats, along with a note directing him to study the New Poetry" (Hart 617). ...

• Word Count: 1512
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate