Friday, May 14, 2010

Do Now: Please get your laptops and open to our blog.
Your task today is to create a photo essay of:

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

By Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow

of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went

down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn

all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. 1922
Hughes wrote this poem when he was 17. He says that "I try to link, in terms of the rivers we have known, Africa, the land of our ancestors, and America, our land today."
Listen to what Hughes has to say about the poem as well as his own rendition of it.
Click here
Open Google Docs or Word and create your pictorial rendition of the poem.