Hughes, Langston | Rebecca L. Walkowitz (essay date December 1999)
Rebecca L. Walkowitz (essay date December 1999)
SOURCE: Walkowitz, Rebecca L. “Shakespeare in Harlem: The Norton Anthology, ‘Propaganda,’ Langston Hughes.” Modern Language Quarterly 60, no. 4 (December 1999): 495-519.
[In the following essay, Walkowitz explores Hughes's employment of poetry as a means of social and political discourse.]
Politics in any country in the world is dangerous. For the poet, politics in any country in the world had better be disguised as poetry. … Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.
—Langston Hughes
Mr. Shakespeare in Harlem Mr. Theme for English B Preach on kind sir of Death, if it please—
—Kevin Young
Langston Hughes proposes a twofold disguise: he will conceal “politics” in “poetry,” and he will suggest that poetry is constitutive of a politics it is often thought to transcend. For...
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