Harlem Renaissance Sonnets.

Harlem Renaissance Sonnets.

Harlem Renaissance poets used sonnets significantly to convey different messages to their African American fellows. The black people faced various problems in those times, such as racism, poverty, illiteracy, and, most of all, slavery. They lived in fear and pain. The poets wrote to comfort them, but some to express their sorrow to the world. In this essay, we will contrast the works of Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, and Countee Cullen.

Langston Hughes expresses the hope for a better life to the Black Americans in his “Dream” sonnet. His strong wordings imply the pain of the Black Man in America. He takes us to the slavery that was ongoing by that period in time. However, in some of his sonnets, he writes of the joyous moments of the Negros too. His heartfelt poems display the frequent encounters of black people’s culture. He shows how the African Americans were forgotten and their dreams not considered at all. He depicts how far liberty and equality were from them. He writes from the point of view of deserted Jazz musicians in “The weary Blues” (Langston Hughes et al.), frustrated Black students in “I, TOO,” and so on. He believed it was because of their low social status that they did not openly pursue their dreams but rather hid them behind their fears.

In contrast, Countee Cullen, who was an editor in a magazine company, wrote sonnets that embraced both the black and white lives (Cullen and Jackson). He had a political interest in his poems, such as “Letter to a white friend.” This could probably be because he had gained formal education. In his work “Heritage,” Cullen visualizes the need to reclaim African arts – a movement called Negritude.  In another sonnet “Dark Tower,” he reviewed Langston’s “The Weary Blues” and pressed him not to be a racial artist. Generally, he tended to be more attracted to Romantic poetry and only promoted the unity of blacks and whites rather than resistance, as Langston did. Themes become vivid in his works. Black Chauvinism was one, clearly seen in “The Black Christ,” and “The Brown Girl” works. Though he was not a staunch rebel against the whites, his poems embraced the coming together of the two races that were deeply against each other by that time.

Claude Mckay was a somewhat lesser but concerned poet of the Racism and malice against the black. He gives him “The Black Problem” (Mckay and Eastman) sonnet a metaphorical approach. He is commencing it with “The halting footsteps of the lass,” which indicates metaphorically how black people followed the lass of economic oppression in the image of prostitution. “If we must die” is a profound work of Claude Mckay and expresses a strong need and urge to resist the oppression that was ongoing. In one of the lines, he says, “…pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back…” to insight the black men to resist oppression and rather not sit down and accept it. In his work, he does not promise so much in the future but promotes the struggle to stay free. In the “Joy in the wood” poem, Claude clearly expresses in an in-depth approach and choice of words, the life of the black man. He mentions slavery and dirty clothing whilst appreciating the beauty of Negros.

In conclusion, poetry is a work of art that impacts the reader significantly. The approach in which a poet chooses to write it may bring about different themes and meaning. Sonnets in the Harlem Renaissance were written with a strategy to bring the message of resistance against social, political, and economic oppression against the blacks. Through their different approaches, they were able to communicate.

Works Cited

Cullen, Countee. Collected Poems. New York, N.Y., Library Of America, 2013.

Langston Hughes, et al. Selected Letters of Langston Hughes. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

—. The Weary Blues. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

Mckay, Claude, and Max Eastman. Harlem Shadows : The Poems of Claude McKay. Eastford, Ct, Martino Fine Books, 2018.