The following is a guest post by Caitlin Rizzo, staffer for the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress.
Last Wednesday marked what would have been the 110th birthday of beloved American poet Langston Hughes. In celebration of this milestone, the Manuscript Division and the Poetry and Literature Center co-hosted a Literary Birthday Celebration in Hughes’s honor. The event, which drew a standing room-only crowd to the Whittall Pavilion, featured DC Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick and Rutgers University Professor Evie Shockley reading and discussing their favorite Hughes poems. The Library’s own Alice Birney ended the event by presenting a tabletop exhibit with key Hughes-related pieces available through the Manuscript Division.
Evie Shockley reading a poem by Langston Hughes.
Dolores Kendrick talked about the influence Hughes’s poems like “Harlem” had on Lorraine Hansbury’s A Raisin in the Sun, as well as a Yale University event featuring Hughes’s poetry and jazz that she participated in. Evie Shockley began her talk with an early poem of Hughes’s, “Johannesburg Mines,” and discussed “what the conventions of poetry preclude us from writing about.” She also praised Hughes for the way he showed how “everyday people can be the source of transformative language.” Alice Birney concluded the event by describing the range of materials she had selected, and the network of friends Hughes developed over his lifetime—among them Ralph Ellison, Carson McCullers, and Ella Winter.
Alice Birney presents a tabletop display of Langston Hughes materials from the Manuscript Division.
The event presented a dynamic portrait of Hughes, from the postcards and headshots he sent friends to the messages of freedom and justice in his poetry. One of the most exciting aspects of the Birthday Celebrations is the way they showcase the author’s legacies of opinions and ideas, through their own in their own hand—legacies that challenge and shape the lives of countless readers.
Helping with events such as this is more than part of my job; as a girl who fell in love with poetry at a very young age (and never really stopped loving it!), spending an hour listening to a poetry reading is a great pleasure. Poetry can be an intensely personal experience—a place of solace that we return to in times of heightened emotion—but I love how readings bring the communal act of language to life.
February 11, 2012 at 12:24 pm
What a wonderful post Caitlin, thank you!
February 17, 2012 at 12:21 am
THANKS in my Heart for Poet Hughes! I have the recitation of Langston Hugh’s poetry at Philadelphia African Museum during Black History Month 1987 give rise to an audience member coming up to me after the performance with the magical assessment question: “do you write poetry”? Key to what within a couple years of the question poetry emerged from my Soul.