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."

This is a nice quote to start with. We all know rivers are old and have been there since the first man appeared on earth…

"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 think the comparison of the soul with the rivers was perfect, but what really helped me to understand the poem was when he mentions the most famous rivers in the history of humanity. Which makes me think also of the first man on earth, the first race and the first civilization ever. 

Black people have always been present in our lives, mostly as slaves, and that is what the author is trying to tell us… “Hey I have been here all my life as a slave, my civilization has been in every civilization.” They have actually gone all around the world, so this poem is talking about the story of black people since the world was created. 

Incident by Countee Cullen

It is hard to talk about this poem, it made me really sad and I think it can make everybody sad. 

"Once riding in old Baltimore,   

   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,   

I saw a Baltimorean

   Keep looking straight at me."

Here it describes the happiness of a little boy going on vacation and how glad he was of knowing some place new, but until he sees a person that lived there…

"Now I was eight and very small,

   And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

   His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'”

Now he is describing the Baltimorean that was a little kid like him and how was the first and maybe last time they met. When the author says he poked out his tongue, he is making allusion maybe to a snake and to emphasize how it hurt him when the Baltimorean called him Nigger…

"I saw the whole of Baltimore

   From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

   That’s all that I remember."

In this last part of the poem is where I think that sometimes when you get hurt or insulted you can’t enjoy everything the same way because it is hard to forget a moment that hurts you. It is like a mark… or a bite of a snake that will stay always there with a little part of the venom.

Spiritual "Swing low, sweet chariot"

"Swing low, Sweet chariot

Coming for to carry me home."

My first impression was that this was going to be about dead as a representation of freedom, but I was wrong this talks about freedom but not dead. It makes allusion to another passage in the Bible when the Jewish wanted to be free form the Egyptians. And again this was something that Negro slaves used to sing. 

"I looked over Jordan 

and what did I see

Coming for to carry me home

A band of Angels coming after me

Coming for to carry me home."

When it says “I looked over Jordan” it doesn’t mean that Jordan is a person, but it is talking about the Jordan river. Also when it says “a band of angels coming after me” I thought of dead once more. But what they are trying to say is that the people that will help them to be free are already coming to help them.