I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers
In June 1921, Crisis magazine published “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” the debut poem from a young man who would soon become the best known and most celebrated black writer in the world: Langston Hughes. A century later, USU English professor Shane Graham has helped commemorate the centennial of this landmark publication by editing two special issues of the Langston Hughes Review around the theme of “‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ at 100.” This follows a roundtable and panel that Graham co-organized at the Modern Language Association Annual Convention in January on the same theme.
As Graham writes in his Foreword to the first issue, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” helped “inaugurate the Harlem Renaissance, became Hughes’s calling card, and established certain core themes of the vast body of work he would publish in the next half-century. Today it feels as important as ever, in part because it was born into a time of crisis that resonates powerfully with our own moment.”
The articles in the special issues explore how the themes Hughes established in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” developed in his later writings; how those themes have continued to influence the works of other writers; how “Rivers” and other poems by Hughes have been translated and circulated in Spain and Korea; and how the poem and its themes have been adapted by musicians and artists.
The first issue of Langston Hughes Review was published at the end of April, with the second issue scheduled for publication in Fall 2021. The issues include original poems and artworks selected by Graham’s co-editor, Chiyuma Elliott of the University of California-Berkeley.
Graham published his book Cultural Entanglements: Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature with the University of Virginia Press in 2020.
For more information or interviews please contact shane.graham@usu.edu.
Mufti Nadimul Quamar Ahmed is a graduate student in his second year, pursuing a doctorate in sociology at USU. He recently helped survey Utahns to see if environmental concerns affect the decision to have children.
Utah State University President’s Office recently held receptions for this year’s round of inaugural lectures. Three recently promoted faculty in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences presented thoughtful reflections on their research and the even...
