Negro and the negro speaks of rivers

Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Also, has been known to employ meter and rhyme,but this is by no means necessary. However, is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode ofexpression makes it nearly impossible to define. In “Negro” and in “The Negro speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes are poems that contain rhymes, literary figures and also when you read have a wonderfulsound.
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” theme of roots is prominent and this theme gives rise to the ultimate meaning of the poem, even though the word "roots" itself is not used in the text. The textualdetails of the poem invoke strong imagery related to veins, rivers, and the roots of trees and give the reader a sense of the timelessness of these objects. The poem begins, "I've known rivers: I'veknown rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins." The river symbolizes the linkage of all human life from the earliest time to the present. He continues, namingrivers that represent the history of Western culture. From the Euphrates to the Mississippi, the history of mankind from Biblical times to the period of the American Civil War is represented. TheEuphrates is considered the cradle of Western civilization. The speaker recognizes his identity as a child of not only his biological parents, but as a child of the cosmos, and he is linked with all racesand creeds for all time through the depth of his soul. The theme of this poem is African-American history. The speaker it’s the author in first person.
“Negro”, this poem reflects the history ofAfrican Americans and the trials and tribulations they endured in the past and continue to endure in the present. Hughes describes himself and his race as having been a slave; worker, singer and...