Hughes and McKay

The poems that we read in class by McKay were mostly sonnets. They followed a strict style of writing. It was very interesting how McKay wrote his poems this way, because it was a very high level of poetry that requires a certain intelligence that people wouldn’t expect of an African American. McKay wrote sonnets very well to show people that he was educated and intelligent. Sonnets are what people like Shakespeare wrote. It is difficult to write a sonnet because every syllable in every word in every line is important to the poem as a whole. Langston Hughes did not write a majority of his poems as sonnets, but his poems were beautiful as well. His poetry was much more informal than McKay. We read a couple of his poems, including Negro Speaks of Rivers and Theme for English B. In Negro Speaks of Rivers he talks about how his ancestors have seen so much history happen and that he is part of his ancestors because they are in his soul. And all of what his ancestors have done and seen has made his soul grow deep like the rivers. Langston Hughes’s poems were easier to relate to, and although some of his poems were angry, it was productive anger.
In McKay's poem, To the White Fiends, he talks about how the white men have done very evil things to the black man, and the black man is just as capable of doing those same cruel things, but they won’t because they don’t want to be savages just like them. Both of these poets write about what it is like to be a black man through their poetry.