Langston Hughes poem "I Still See the Ghost of Langston Hughes" by Denise Low

I Still See the Ghost of Langston Hughes

On the steps of his grandmother’s house

when I drive down Alabama Street.
This is his heaven—he can travel at will
to Cuba, Harlem and all his hometowns.
He visits his brother’s grave in Joplin.

In Lawrence he whispers to every writer

to make music for everyday people.
Sometimes he takes the pen from my hand
and writes a line,  then changes into a boy
vamping vaudeville walks on railroad ties.

Some nights I hear blues singers

like Lee McBee shout country sorrows
and relive Jimmy Reed tunes on electric guitar
or hear the Bopaphonics resort his lines
into hip-hop rounds of words without pause.

Or I sit on the library steps where he walked

holding his mother’s hand. I read books
with dog-eared pages and the touch
of other borrowers left in plies of the paper.
Sometimes I feel his boy’s rapt breath.

I go to movies in the same opera house

where he saw silent films and traveling shows.
In autumn I hear football fans roar near his house
and feel the chill that penetrates every coat.
In summer the wind rises, awakens oak leaves,
and I hear his restless, restless feet—always ready to go.

from Ghost Stories of the New West (Topeka: Woodley, 2010)

LANGSTON HUGHES: CONNECTIONS TO LAWRENCE & CAREER OVERVIEW

These are my comments for the 18^th Langston Hughes Contest Awards Ceremony, Feb. 1, 2014, sponsored by the Raven Bookstore and the Lawrence Arts Center, © by Denise Low. Contest winners are Crystal Boson and Justin Runge
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The Langston family members are a link to the abolitionist past of Lawrence. They resided in the area from 1870 to 1915—45 years. They embodied the struggles of the the war against slavery. Langston Hughes’s grandmother Mary Sampson Patterson, who attended Oberlin College, first married Lewis Sheridan. He was killed with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. She kept Sheridan’s blood-stained shawl and later wrapped grandson Langston Hughes in it, as he describes in The Big Sea. In 1869 Mary married Charles Langston, a hero of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. They lived at Lakeview from 1870 to 1886 , ten miles northwest of Lawrence on an oxbow of the Kansas River, where his 120-acre farm was described as one of the best apple orchards of the state and “all inclosed and all under construction except 30 acres of timber land. He has a comfortable residence and good farm buildings” (A.T. Andreas Vol. 1, 350). Langston Hughes’s great-grandmother Johanna Sampson lived in Lakeview with the family also (1880 census). Charles Langston had a foster son, Desalines Langston, who lived with the couple until adulthood.

In 1886 the household moved to a city block at 7^th and Alabama Street (Lawrence City Directory 1886). By then Charles and Mary had two children, Nathaniel and Caroline (born in 1873), who would become Langston’s mother. On Alabama, Hughes owned several houses and a large lot.  Grown son Desalines resided at 726 Alabama, (City Directory), and the current building may be original. Langston Hughes grew up at 732 Alabama, in a house torn down in the 1960s. A house identical to the one at 732 Alabama remains next door at 736 Alabama, restored by Ian Hurst. Charles continued to farm or lease his Lakeview holdings, and he was a partner in the Burns Grocery at 820 Massachusetts Street until his death in 1892. He is buried in the Lawrence cemetery, along with his wife, Desalines, and other family members. He was active in the nearby Baptist Church and the local newspapers. He also was a member of an African American fraternal organization in the 8^th and New Hampshire building. Charles and Mary were active, respected members of the Lawrence community.
Caroline, or Carrie, Langston married James Hughes in about 1900, lost a child, then had Langston in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, about a hundred miles from Lawrence. Grandmother Mary was residing with them. Almost immediately the couple separated—the Lawrence City Directory shows Carrie Hughes at 732 Alabama in 1902, in the city directory copyrighted that year. Through the years, Langston Hughes spent most of the time with his grandmother, but sometimes lived with his mother wherever she found work. Nonetheless, Rampersad affirms, “Here, in almost the exact center of the continental United States, Hughes would pass most of the first 13 years of his life” (Rampersad 5). He refers to Lawrence, 1902 to 1915. After the death of his grandmother in 1915, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, 731 New York Street. He attended Pinckney School, New York School, and the city junior high that was at 9^th and Tennessee—now an office building. He and his mother read books from the Lawrence Public Library, the Carnegie building. He saw vaudeville and silent movies at Liberty Hall Opera House, although restricted to the balcony. He found piece work with the Barteldes Seed Company, on New Hampshire Street. He attended St. Luke’s AME Church, which he writes about in his autobiography. He attended events at the Ninth Street Baptist Church. Much of the Lawrence that Hughes knew still exists. His grandparents, Desalines, and other family members are buried in the Lawrence cemetery.
Lawrence was at a crossroads, on the train lines that brought traveling musicians and actors, so he had a rich cultural background—from school, church, downtown entertainment, and the African American business community on Vermont Street. He was prepared to excel by the time he followed his mother to Illinois, Cleveland, Washington, D.C. and beyond. In the 1920s he became well known as a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Hughes was a prolific genius. He first published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry. Vachel Lindsay recognized his talent and facilitated his first book The Weary Blues (1926), the first African American book of poetry from a mainstream publisher, Knopf. Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and

Aaron Douglas.
In all, Hughes published eleven books of fiction—in 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature. He wrote twelve major plays; sixteen books of poetry; eight books for children, and six nonfiction books, including autobiographies The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander. He translated works of literature into English. His journalism includes writing for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-American newspapers during the Spanish Civil War. In the 1940s, he wrote a column for the Chicago Defender—the Jesse B. Semple stories. Hughes was the first black American to earn his living from writing and lectures.
Hughes was not always a popular writer with the critics. He wrote about social realities and racism, not prettified. His audience was the African American public. In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" he asserts “If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, / it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. “ The poem continues, “If colored people / are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure / doesn't matter either. . . .” The poem concludes with the idea of being “free within ourselves.” Hughes traveled widely and had a global influence, including the “Negritude” movement in France and influence on African poets Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire.
During the 100^th anniversary of Hughes’s birth celebration in Lawrence, Alice Walker spoke about a less known accomplishment of Hughes—he mentored her and many others. Others who attended and spoke about his influence were Amira Baraka, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Billy Joe Harris, Danny Glover, Sonia Sanchez, and many others who came to Hughes’s hometown to honor him. At that time one of the organizers, Maryemma Graham, a Kansas University professor, said this about Hughes:
“He wrote jazz poems and he created gospel plays. These are forms that we now recognize but we don’t really think of them in relationship to the originator, the innovator that Hughes was. What we call vernacular poetry or spoken word art or hip hop – that’s Langston Hughes”   (Radio Interview KANU, 10 July 2001)”
Langston Hughes and his family lived in Lawrence for generations and their legacy continues to influence on Lawrence. Our celebration of him continues the abolitionist tradition of this town, which was founded to oppose legal slavery. Literature is a strong force in the continuing struggle for equity.

Langston Hughes D.C. Residence (1924-26) Is on S St. NW

1749 S.St. NW c. Denise Low

Langston Hughes residence 1924-6

Langston Hughes lived in Washington, D.C. 1924-26. He lived briefly at the YMCA on 12^th St., but mostly he was at 1749 S. St. NW. He came to D.C. to live with his mother and brother Kit, but he also aspired to attend Howard University. On S. St., the small family lived in two unheated, rented rooms (DC Writers). Across the street lived the parents of Charles Hamilton Houston, who would be a 1950s law professor at Howard. Hughes also visited Saturday night salons of neighbor Georgia Douglas Johnson, who lived at 1641 S. St. NW. Here Hughes was able to “discuss literature, eat cake, and drink wine” (Mills).  This building has been torn down—1631 remains (see photo). These would have been luxuries to Hughes, who was desperately poor at the time. To raise money, he held a series of odd jobs, including proof reading for the Washington Sentinel and busing tables at the Wardman Park hotel. At the segregated hotel, poet Vachel Lindsay read Hughes’s poetry and gave him his break (Cultural Tourism). Hughes began his career: “While living in DC, he published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), and wrote most of the poems that would become his second book, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)” (DC Writers). In his memoir The Big Sea and in the article “Our Wonderful Society, Washington (Opportunity, Aug. 1927), he describes his struggles during these years with class issues. In Lawrence and Kansas City he had a background in popular cultures of the time—blues, early jazz, oral literatures, dance. He continued to seek out arts of the common African American people while he was in Washington D.C. (Mills).

A personal note: in Lawrence, my hometown, many buildings where Hughes attended school, plays, church services, and worked are still standing. A grocery store his grandfather owned in the 1880s is still standing on the main street. See more photos in Langston Hughes in Lawrence, by Denise Low and Thomas Weso, http://www.mammothpublications.com/catalog1.0.html It is a total coincidence that son Daniel Low, from Lawrence, has a house within a block of Langston’s residence, or is it?

Photos all © by Denise Low, 2012.
“Langston Hughes Residence: African American Heritage Trail.” Cultural Tourism  D.C. 1999-2012. Web.
“Langston Hughes.” DC Writers’ Homes. 2012. Web.
Fitzpatrick, Sandra and Maria R. Goodwin, The Guide to Black Washington, rev. ed. (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1999).
Freund, David M.P.  and Marya Annette McQuirter, Biographical Supplement and Index, Young Oxford History of African Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Mills, Paul T. “Langston Hughes.” The Black Renaissance in Washington. June 20, 2003. Web.
Gatewood, Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 338.
Rampersad, Arnold. Life of Langston Hughes (2 volumes from Oxford University, 1988, 1986)

LANGSTON HUGHES WRITING CONTEST DEADLINE IS DEC. 10, 2010

The Lawrence Arts Center and the Raven Book Store announce their sponsorships of the 2011 Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award. Two awards of $500 each will be given annually, one in the area of poetry and one in the area of fiction.


APPLICATION DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 10, 2010 All manuscripts will be submitted electronically, via email. Please submit the materials according to SUBMISSION GUIDELINES as an attachment to the following email address: lhsubmissions@lawrenceartscenter.org. See details at http://www.lawrenceartscenter.org/Storypages/2010/Langston-Hughes-Award.html

Writer Eligibility:
• Writers of poetry or fiction
• Writers currently living in Douglas County and who have lived here for one year prior to submission of materials
• Writers who are 21 years old or older
• Writers who have published a book-length volume of poetry or fiction are not eligible. (Self-published works are exempted.)
• Previous winners are not eligible.

Selection: Selection will be based on artistic quality as presented in materials submitted and will be made by a committee of outstanding regional writers. The committee reserves the right to issue no awards.Sponsors of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award: The Raven Bookstore and The Lawrence Arts Center.

Growing up in Lawrence prepared Langston Hughes (1902-1967) to understand the difficulties of a racist society as well as the complexities of life itself. He responded by writing in diverse genres--poetry, fiction, drama, memoir, travel narrative--and in diverse styles, drawing on the rich culture of African Americans and the many voices of American democracy. His writing reflected this diversity--shifting from the psychological and political to the lyrical, the tragic, the humorous, crossing literary boundaries, always experimental, always seeking to express a clearer, more memorable vision of the reality he experienced. The Langston Hughes Award seeks to encourage and support poets and writers who, today, are continuing to present their life experiences creatively through poetry, stories, and non-fiction prose. Surprise us. Move us. Help us see ourselves and our lives in new ways.

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT #19

BARRY BARNES (1960 - )

Here is a poet who performs poetry as well as he writes poetry. I first heard him read at a poetry slam fifteen years ago, and I was impressed with how much substance he put into his spoken word creations. He reads and performs often in northeast Kansas, often in support of good causes like Art Togeau and the Langston Hughes Literary Awards.
To hear Barry Barnes, attend a performance August 1st 6pm-8pm at the Union Pacific Railroad Depot, 402 N. 2nd St. Also appearing are the Bopaphonics, Zydeco Tougeau, Matt Fowler, and myself. You can download spoken word and music at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=186910480

Barnes draws on the poetic tradition and enlivens it each time he performs. At a recent performance, I heard Barnes recite from memory a number of poems by Langston Hughes, Robert Burns, and Shakespeare. This writer also appears on spoken word recordings that improvise on Hughes’s poetry. He writes about very contemporary themes, like Hughes, yet at the same time and on the same stage, he reaches back to previous centuries.
“Kicked to the Curb” is a rarity in American English verse: a successful social protest poem. The straightforward dialect is made powerful by parallel yet varied comments. This is not a simple anti-war poem—the poet lists some plausible reasons for the conflict in the second stanza. The costs of war, nonetheless, are clear. A political poem shares qualities with narrative poetry: embedded within these images is a storyline. Finally, this is a moral comment that protests the treatment of returning veterans, especially those with war wounds. The title has shock-effect, or hyperbole (exaggeration) to move readers to action.

KICKED TO THE CURB

An army of amputees
return from overseas.
Traumatic brain injuries:
can’t hear, can’t think, can’t speak, can’t see.
post traumatic stress syndrome
can’t concentrate, can’t eat, can’t sleep.
Unexplained disorders and diseases
and what for?
What is the reason for this war?

Revenge for 9-11.
To free Iraqis.
War on terror.
Cheap oil.

When all our soldiers finally come home
will they be forgotten and kicked to the curb?


Education: Barry Barnes is a life-long resident of Lawrence, where he attended public schools.
Career: This poet’s book of poetry, We Sleep in a Burning House, is from Mammoth Publications (2008, http://www.mammothpublications.com/ ). He adapted poetry of Langston Hughes to musical form for Plain and Simple Truth (Chameleon Productions 2007). He appears with the Bopaphonics on these Chameleon spoken-word productions: Let America Be America Again (2006), Channeling Langston (2005), P-Bop (2004). Super Cow is another ensemble CD. His poems appear in the compilation Kaw! Kaw! Kaw! (Gonk Monster and Chameleon Productions 2000). Barnes produced CDs: Blue in a Red State (with Stacey Fox 2003) and Straight Out of Kansas (2005). He works for Hallmark in Lawrence. See http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=186910480 .
____________________________________________________________ © 2008 Denise Low, AAPP19 © 2008 Barry Barnes, “Kicked to the Curb.” © 2007 Charles Goff III, photograph.

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT #3

JAMES LANGSTON MERCER HUGHES (1902-1967)

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin and raised in Lawrence until 1915-16. He was a true genius: he innovated the art of mixing spoken words with music, still an evolving American art form. He celebrated African American culture as he wrote poetry using the spoken vocabulary and sometimes in blues rhythms. He was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City, where he wrote plays, performed poetry, and mentored writers. He was a journalist, essayist, novelist, lyricist, and children’s author.

When my husband and I researched Hughes’s life in Lawrence for our book Langston Hughes in Lawrence, we found his homes were within walking distance of the Kaw River. He must have walked to its banks and watched the incessant current. The Kaw indeed is a “muddy” river that can be “golden” at dusk.

In this poem, Hughes calls on his memory of rivers as he catalogues, or lists, rivers important to world civilizations. He writes in uneven lines but maintains the poetic feel by using parallel beginnings and repetitions. He wrote of his poetry that it was often “racial in theme” and in “the rhythms of jazz.” This free-flowing poem could be an improvised solo.

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF 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 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.

Education: Langston Hughes graduated from high school in Cleveland, attended Columbia University, and earned a BA from Lincoln University, a historically black university.

Career: Beginning with The Weary Blues (1926), Hughes made his living as a professional writer and lecturer. He published over 40 books and wrote numerous plays.

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© 2007 Denise Low AAPP3. © 1959 Harold Ober Assoc. Inc. “Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Portrait by Winold Reiss