Race in Poetry a Topic of Constant

Race in Poetry

A Topic of Constant Relevance

The importance of race in the United States is discussed on many levels, from nightly newscasts to political campaigns to courtrooms. It is the conversation that never ends in this nation. The particulars change, a little, but the cadence is the same, and the sorrows are the same, and the regrets and anger persist. It seems likely that in a thousand years (if there is an America in a thousand years) that our national dialogue will still be about race. This paper examines a set of poems that take up the issue of race.

While poetry is hardly likely to be the first thing that one thinks of when seeking to understand race in America, the two poems analyzes here both make trenchant points about what it is like to be a person of color in the United States. This paper analyzes two poems -- Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" and Li-Young Lee's "Persimmons" -- to explore some of the many discussions about race that make up the national dialogue on the topic.

Hughes's poem is a study on the relationship of an African-American man who finds himself alone -- although alone only in the sense that the narrator of the poem finds himself in a classroom in which he is the only black person. Lee's poem is written from a perspective of being inside a family. While Hughes writes how race divides Americans, Lee focuses on how race unites him with his family and their past.

One of the most famous and skilled writers about race as a fundamental element of American life was Langston Hughes. Writing from his own experience as an African-American man in an era in which the lives of black Americans were harshly constrained, he was able to write about a broad slice of American life as lived through the lens of race. Hughes wrote "Theme for English B" in 1951, long after he was himself the age of the student in whose voice the poem is expressed. He is participating in a sort of time travel as he wrote this, taking himself (and us) back to a time before World War II. The voice of the poem is analytical and distant, entirely aware of the injustices of the world, and just as aware of the slowness of change.

The poem begins with an assignment given to a student in what must be a sort of remedial English. The instructor tells the students that if they write what is in their hearts, then what they write will necessarily be true. The first evidence of how race shapes the world of the speaker (and the instructor and the other students who are the inhabitants of the poem and us as readers) is that he questions the idea of a guaranteed truth.

Hughes opens the poem with a statement and a response, a miniature dialogue between the teacher and the student that only the student can hear.

The instructor said,

Go home and write a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you-

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?

The poet's experience of the world is a world in which certain people's stories are taken as truths and the stories of other people (that is, people like the poet, people who are not white) face a far less certain fate. The black student does not bother to speak outloud: His race ensures that he will not be heard.

Lee takes up the same idea of how race makes it hard for other people to listen and to hear. In his case, there is the additional complication of language. Hughes's narrator does not even try to be heard, perhaps because as a black man he has the knowledge of generations and generations of his family's being silenced. Lee still has some faith that if he just says things clearly enough then his race will not be a barrier.

Just as Hughes opens his poem with a description of a teacher who cannot hear or appreciate a student, Lee uses the same literary device. He too tells a story about a teacher who cannot hear, understand, or appreciate a student who is not white:

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker slapped the back of my head and made me stand in the corner for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision.

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker slapped the back of my head and made me stand in the corner for not knowing the difference between persimmon and precision.

Lee's poem addresses how he finds his way through a society in which the way he looks and the way he talks ensure that he can never fit in. Like Hughes's, Lee's narrator both resents and understands why whites find him different and even problematic. Both narrators also understand that their "difference" gives them the chance to recognize and speak of truths that are hidden to those in power. Both poets argue that they can see more clearly than white Americans how race both divides and unites us.

Hughes writes about how the particulars of our racial make-up divides Americans one from the other, the fact that we are defined by race is a strong force for unity. The poet tells us that he likes 'Bessie, bop, and Bach', a reminder of the commonalities of human experience -- and then segues into a warning about the racial the divisions among Americans.

You are white-yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That's American.

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that's true!

Hughes understands that his race insured that he would never be seen as being as good as the white men and women with whom he lived and worked. But he was at the same time absolutely certain that he was completely American. He wrote about the problems in his America. But, as troubled as it was, as imperfect as it was, it was always his America. Lee does not have the reassurance of such a connection. He may not even want it.

Lee, just on the cusp of becoming an American in the long story of the immigration narrative of the United States, is struggling with the implications of race along with the barriers of language. Added to this for Lee is the fear of losing his family as he becomes more American. His narrator tries to reassure both his father and himself that he will not be lost in his new Americanness: