Harlem is possibly the most well-known poem in the collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), by Langston Hughes. It talks about the social situation in Harlem in the 1950s and it was prophetic of the later years when unrest erupted into outright violence.
The poem is his interpretation of the African-American dream gone awry in Harlem. Hughes wrote very sensually. That is, he wrote what he discerned by his senses, and he used sensory images to convey his meaning, which was not really in the words, but in the readers reaction to the words, as happens with most poetry which uses concrete imagery. Nothing in the poem contains any emotional phrases at all. It is simply a question using imagery that evokes the desired response. This technique of using imagery makes the poems powerful, yet not maudlin.
It is likely that Hughes was well-read, and even more likely that he kept up with current black writing, so he would have seen the description by
Mary Ross, a New York Times reporter writing about Harlem in 1925: Harlem is the proud capital of [the black] race—something entirely new on the face of the earth—a modern negro metropolis, a city of movement, gayety and color, singing, dancing, boisterous laughter and loud talk.”1
So her description leads into the meaning of Hughes poem, just as his line a raisin in the sun leads into the name of the play by Hansberry (1959). Harlem was founded in 1658 by Dutch settlers. It was named Nieuw Haarlem after a city in Holland until British immigrants were renamed. It was 90% non-black until about 1930, by which time the black population was over 200,000 and it had become a power center for African-Americans and a locus for art, jazz, and blues. However, by 1951, when this poem was written, it had begun to fade. It was becoming a black slum. In fact, riots did not break out until after the death of Martin Luther King in 1968, fully a year after the death of Langston Hughes. (History of Harlem 2010)
The poem is short, but it is as long as it needs to be. We have a question about what happens to a dream deferred, and then it is followed by the images of a dried-up grape (raisin in the sun), a festering runny sore, rotting meat, a sagging heavy load, or an explosion. All of these are powerful and they build from the least to the most powerful. None of them is pretty.
While we like raisins, the process by which the grape becomes a raisin is not terribly pleasant if we contemplate going that same process ourselves. A slow drying process shrivels the grape until it becomes a sweet raisin. This image is no mistake. The drying concentrates the sweetness in a smaller package. The power of this image lies in the dual nature of the image: a long and painful process of drying and an eventual concentration of the sweetness. The next image gets stronger, a festering runny sore. This one plays upon the idea that a problem ignored festers and then oozes poison, hiding infection inside.
This image adds texture to the mention of the supposed slimy infection ooze. The image of rotting meat has also a double character in that it is spoilage of something valuable and produces a horrible stench, like garbage. One might even imagine maggots consuming the useless flesh. The sagging heavy load does not fall in the poem, though it hints that eventually, it will. Instead, the last image is the explosion, which actually happened after the death of King.
Langston Hughes actually described the history of Harlem during his lifetime in this poem. It started out as a beautiful sweet grape, which could have become any of the finest wines, then it was neglected and left to fester and become diseased with poverty, unrest, social degradation, and rage which threatened to destroy it. The best of what was Harlem was being spoiled by the factors of poor economy, social and political neglect, and racism.
The social maggots of crime, drugs, and gangs were feeding on the meat. The load which was being carried by the populace was weighing them down and threatening to collapse the entire neighborhood. This finally did erupt in the explosion of racial riots after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, who had been a symbol for the black community of the possibility of justice and social development. His assassination set off such explosions all over the country, but Harlem had been the brightest hope of all.
In looking at the mechanics of the poem, we see what was certainly accidental rhyme which he pushed around until it fit his pattern, with a pattern of A-B-A-B-C-D-C-E-F-E. While not a standardized scheme, it is a pattern which gives the poem power, since it emphasizes those end words: sun-run, meat-sweet, and load-explode. The rhythm, on the other hand, seems totally deliberate. The beginning of the poem is iambic quatrameter, then it moves into iambic pentameter with a beginning anapestic foot, almost like a running step into the iambic pentameter. The next two lines change once again, using iambic tetrameter followed by a single anapest.
The next line is another iambic tetrameter beginning with an anapest, followed by another iambic tetrameter which ends in a dangling weak syllable, followed by two anapests in the next line. The final lines change once again, with a reversal of rhythm from rising to falling. ” Maybe it just sags.” This is three feet, but it begins with two trochaic feet and ends in a stressed syllable. Then it reverses once again with a dactylic followed by a plain iambic foot. “Like a heavy load.”
Then the final line is different again, with a beginning weak syllable followed by a spondee and one final iambic foot. “or does it explode?” This rhyme scheme uses all different lengths and patterns of iambic rhythm, but never repeats, and yet it fits perfectly, almost like a song. (Lowney 2000) If rap had been popular around Hughes’ time this would have fit the form perfectly: conversational, yet highly constrained rhythm in a perfect pattern as a single drum signature.
The way Langston Hughes used imagery, rhythm, and emphasized rhyme plus the double meanings of his images gives this poem a huge load. It carries much more information than is carried by just words. The imagery carries connections to sensory reactions and the power builds from the weakest image to the strongest on the last word. More than this the progression of imagery carries the historical progression of the history of Harlem, itself, throughout the life of Langston Hughes. It had not reached the point of explosion before he died, but he saw this coming.
References
Chasar M. The Sounds of Black Laughter and the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes. American Literature [serial online]. March 2008;80(1):57-81.
Hanberry, Lorraine Vivian. 1959. A Raisin in the Sun.
History of Harlem. 2010. The Reading Room. Web.
Lowney, J. (2000). Langston Hughes and the Nonsense’ of Bebop. American Literature, 72(2), 357. Retrieved from Academic Search Elite database.
Footnotes
From Chasar M. The Sounds of Black Laughter and the Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes. American Literature [serial online]. 2008;80(1):57-81. Available from: Academic Search Elite, Ipswich, MA. Mary Ross, “Negro City in Harlem Is a Race Capital,” New York Times, 1925, sec. 8.