SOURCE: Tracy, Steven C. “Langston Hughes: Poetry, Blues, and Gospel—Somewhere to Stand.” In Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence, edited by C. James Trotman, pp. 51-61. New York, N.Y.: Garland Publishing, 1995.

In the following essay, Tracy examines the influence of music—specifically the blues and gospel singing—on the poetry of Langston Hughes.

The Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes once said, “Give me somewhere to stand and I will move the earth.” Literary artists, too, must find their places to stand in order to move the earth. And certainly the best of them plant their feet where the ground seems to them to be most stable, especially when their mission is to move the firmament from the shoulders of Atlas onto their own, to provide some new, revolutionary, and mountainous foundation for our visionary dreams. In the midst of that Modernist revolution...