Harlem Renaissance Poetry Reflection !

Reading Harlem Renaissance poetry was definitely an interesting experience. The majority of the poems I read were by Langston Hughes. I enjoyed his poems very much and they were interesting for me to read. Some of the poems that I read by Langston Hughes were about the oppression of African American people at that time. Not only did he write about the hardships of African American people but he also wrote about a variety of types of people. Some of these poems are “Snob” and “Enemy.” While reading his poems I also found that the titles of his poems never left you guessing. They were always straight forward and you pretty much had an idea what the poem was going to be about just by reading the title. I must say that I enjoyed Hughes’ poems more than the poems by the other poets. I don’t know why it is that I enjoy them more since they are all from the same category but they way that Hughes forms his poems interested me. His poems are not particularly long in fact they are rather short, most of them only being 4 to 20 lines long. Even though they are not long they are still full of vivid imagery and meaning.
Some of the other poets that I read are Arna Bontemps, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer. These poets also wrote about the same main topic of African American oppression and society. Many of the poems are about the experiences they had being black in a dominant white society. There are more poems about this by these poets then by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes wrote more about love and people then he did about living as an African American. It seemed to me that Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poems were darker than the poems by the other poets. My favorite poem of Dunbar’s is “We Wear the Mask.” The most memorable line to me from this poem is “We wear the mask that grins and lies,/ it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes…” This line is powerful and meaningful for me. It shows the struggles that African Americans faced living in a dominant white society. But even if you are not an African American many people can still relate to the feeling of being different and everything you do is wrong. I enjoyed very much reading poems from the Harlem Renaissance and the poems were meaningful and moving for me.