Topic

The Imagism of Pound Vs Cultural Identity of Hughes

Instructions

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In 1800 words and using MHRA formatting style, compare and contrast poems as well as poets. Conduct a close reading of each poet’s work and discuss them in terms of theme and technique. Understanding imagism in relation to Pound and issues of cultural identity in relation to Hughes will be important.

Question

‘America’s chief contribution to poetry will be its encouraging of extreme diversity.’ Discuss this statement with reference to the work of two American poets on your course. Your answer should include close readings of at least three poems by each author.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

In this essay, you should compare and contrast both theme and technique in your chosen poems in order to fully register diversity in American poetry.

In order to do this effectively, you should choose two poets whose works you see as being quite different from one another. It might also be worth choosing poems by each writer that are different from one another: this would have the benefit of highlighting diversity within the individual poet’s work.

As well as dealing with particular poems, your essay could also make use of your chosen writer’s comments on poetry in general, on their own poetry, and on American poetry. This will require research identifying relevant critical material by these writers.

Your close reading readings of poems should deal with poems not covered in the Course Notes (though you may refer to these in passing). In the case of Whitman, you may use Leaves of Grass. But again, while you may refer in passing to sections of the poem covered in the Course Notes, your close readings should be of sections not covered in those Notes.

Your answer should seek to identify characteristics of subject, tone, technique in the poems that you choose to write about. You should focus on what is distinctively personal in the poetry, but also what is distinctively American. You should ask yourself what your poets have added to the canon of American poetry and to the canon of poetry in general.

In your conclusion, assuming that you agree with the proposition in the title, you should seek to reinforce your comments on diversity. However, you should also speculate as to what the various poems may have in common and as to whether it may be possible to see both diversity but also broad similarities between the works. Your closing remarks might address the question: though there may be diversity in American poetry is there anything that we could refer to as characteristically American poetry.

Answer preview

Langston Hughes first received attention for his works of art in the 1920s during the ‘Harlem Renaissance’. While the whites embraced his straight forward and penetratingly subjective way of expressing himself, the black intellectuals felt Hughes was over exposing the African Americans and their imperfect way of life. Most of the educated black elite were outraged by the subject matter of Hughes poems with some accusing the poet of parading their imperfections to the American public but this did not deter the poet. In few instances Hughes took to defending his work as stemming from his real, from his environment and the poems were thus inspired by his life. He came from a highly unstable home where his parents had separated and his father had taken off and rejected everything black. On the other hand, Ezra Pound background was stable and the same could be gleaned from his work.

The subject matter of Hughes poems leaned towards his total identity with black people. The poems were about the struggles of the African American race. Their economic instability which stemmed from the scarcity of jobs and the dearth of job security. The poems also dealt with a plethora of indignities that was the life of blacks and whilst the issues brought out were so grim, Hughes style was light and he always managed to infuse humor. His poems varied in length but he had some lengthy creations. Pound on the other created very short and compact poems as he believed in choosing few but most effective words to convey his message. On word economy the two diverged in the style of presenting their creations.

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