Langston Hughes: Poet, Activist, Playwright, and Influencer
Langston Hughes, a strong contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, was immensely influenced by poets and activists who led him to become one of the most influential poets. During his childhood, Hughes moved from several states within in the South. His upbringing was unstable. In the beginning of his life, his father, nor mother was able to take care of him. As a result, he lived with his grandmother from the age of one to eleven. His grandmother was a lover of activism, and raised Hughes not only with a love of activism, but a sense of racial pride. These beliefs played themes in all of Hughes’ work. In fact, his audience claimed to admire most the pride he felt for his African-American …show more content…
Hughes was able to weave the rhythms of jazz music into his poetry. He had noticed that the Jazz musicians were able to use rhythm to depict the life of urban blacks. Influenced by the musicians ideas, he was able to create a new literary art form: Jazz Poetry, where Hughes used rhythm to illustrate the lives of urban blacks. As a child, his teachers and grandmothers introduced him to several poets. The poets were Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, as well as the black poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, a master of both dialect and standard verse, and Claude McKay, a radical socialist who also wrote accomplished lyric poetry. However, Sandburg, who Hughes later called "my guiding star," was led him towards using free verse and led him to have more democratic views. The popularity of his work was instant. Before he knew it, he was travelling around the world reading his poetry to people of all race. His African-American race consciousness and usage of rhythms in his poetry influenced many foreign Black writers including Jacques Roumain and Nicolas Guillen. During one of Hughes’ travels he met Nicolas Guillen. Langston Hughes, through his love of music, persuaded Nicolás Guillén to