Life is Fine (Langston Hughes)

When you are happy, sing out! When you are feeling gleeful, everything seems a song. It's like that in today's poem by Langston Hughes.

It has a beat and a cadence like a song - it even has a chorus. And is that, where it's in italics, a spoken interlude? Haha. This poem has so many common song attributes.

I like the message of the poem, as well. That life is meant for living (by definition, no?), so ignore all your troubles and get on with it and live. Cuz, after all "Life is fine!"

Ooh, and that reminds me of that other quote: "While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful." (attributed to H.G. Wells)

Since his claim that "life is fine!" seems a little screeched and not 100% genuine, it comes across as pretend. However, what's truly wrong with that? After all, life must be lived, so why not be cheerful about it.

Favorite line: "So since I'm still here livin', / I guess I will live on."

Dreams (Langston Hughes)

Oh man, who doesn't know this poem? I had to memorize it back in the day. For some reason I think it may have been the first poem we ever truly covered in school - had a discussion about. Langston Hughes has written far better poems, but still, this one has a special place for me.

It's seems like a poem written in an English class. "Take a common word and write a poem in which you creatively define it. At least two metaphors required." Guess that makes L. Hughes a slacker since he did the bare minimum.

Dunno, guess I liked it a lot more when I first encountered it. Wonder if that's the case for other people. That it doesn't have much repeat value.

Favorite line: "Life is a barren field"

The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes)

What I love about this poem by Langston Hughes is how slowly it reads. I mean the second line is an eighteen word sentence that wouldn't be out of place in a (lovely and rather poetic) school essay. And later on there is a twenty-eight word sentence. How can one not read the poem majestically and slowly?

What I also love in this poem is how it paints in broad brush strokes the history of African-Americans. And for such a complicated past it is a marvel that Hughes is able to do so in only ten lines with such slow, deep, and still beauty.

Favorite line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."