Post your main response and responses to two classmates’ posts, collectively amounting to 250 words minimum (at least 100 for your main post and at least 75 for each reply to classmates) due by Monday of next week, 3/28 — Be sure that your main response answers the prompt thoroughly and that your responses to classmates directly address the ideas discussed in their posts in depth. Please, put as much effort into your replies to classmates as you do your response to the prompt. Your replies are what make this a discussion. Thank you.

Hughes’s Poetry Culminating in “Harlem”

After reading the six poems, take another close look at “Harlem.” In all its apparent simplicity, doesn’t it capture all the themes and spirit of Hughes’s earlier, longer works, although, perhaps, expressed differently, somehow? How is “Harlem” similar to these earlier works by Hughes, and how is it different?  In what ways does “Harlem” respond to the earlier poems, and in what ways does it depart? Would you call it a departure or a continuation? Explain your interpretation.