As an uninhibited black poet, his gloomy, rough and simple poetic style has been initially shown in Black Talk about Rivers.
After reading this short poem, it seems that a vivid picture rises in our mind: a black poet crossed the Atlantic Ocean, arrived at the west coast of Africa, traveled far in western Europe, returned to the motherland to wander around the world, looked up at the sky, and faced the mighty Mississippi River in the twilight, expressed his unparalleled affection and sang this magnificent poem.
In human history, blacks have made outstanding contributions. At the beginning of the poem, Hughes, with this national pride, condensed his contempt for the racial discrimination policy in American society at that time and his profound understanding of life, society and history, and sang a sudden sentence: "I know Rivers."
Rivers all over the world, large and small, are the cradle of human survival and development, and the birthplace of human spiritual and material civilization. The moral of the poem I Know Rivers is that I know the history of human civilization.
This is a historical proposition of philosophy. If you answer with short lines, it will not only make the poem dry, but also have no convincing logical power. In "Negro Talk about Rivers", with the help of four parallel sentences, the poet has transcended his thoughts for a long time and returned to human history. It crossed the vast space and reached Asia, Africa and America.
The poet said that in the Euphrates River, which irrigated the ancient Persian culture, blacks were bathed in the Gao Yuanfeng of Anatolia in southwest Asia.
The poet said that on the banks of the Congo, blacks used to build huts there and spend the morning and evening in human history.
The poet said that black people once looked down on the Nile and built pyramids for Egyptian pharaohs with blood, sweat and tears.
The poet said that once in Mississippi, accompanied by singing, black people sent away countless golden nights there.
In the poem "Black People Talk about Rivers", langston hughes vented the stagnation in the poet's chest with an irresistible trend. He brought our thoughts to the human era with one historical picture scroll after another, and made us feel the great role of the black nation in the long river of human history. The abstract philosophy is completely integrated into the image of the poem.
This poem jumps in artistic conception, but it has strict ideological logic. If we carefully analyze the appearance of poetry, it seems that we can judge such a kind of thinking logic: I know the river-it is as old as before, even older than human beings-I have developed and multiplied under the nurture of the river, and the river is the witness of my existence-so I know the river-life has tortured me and educated me, and my mind and soul are as deep as the river.
In the language structure of this poem, long sentences and short sentences are intertwined and uneven; The upper part of these four parallelism sentences is similar in structure, while the lower part is different in structure. This change has both neat and balanced poetic structure and plain unity; There is not only a leap in the form of poetry, but also the sound of palace merchants in rhythm.