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W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois’s masterpiece, which first appeared in 1903, established the intellectual foundation for discourse on Black liberation throughout the rest of the twentieth century. It’s also a key text for Hughes, who read and admired Du Bois as a young man. Du Bois’s influence can be felt in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” particularly in the repeated use of the word “soul” to reference the collective experience of Black communities across time and space.

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

Though Hughes had a very different vision of America than Whitman, he drew much inspiration from the way his nineteenth-century predecessor pushed formal boundaries in his verse. Hughes was interested in Whitman’s use of varied line lengths to explore how the exuberant self “overflows” the usual limits of traditional meter. Evidence of this interest may be seen in the varied line lengths in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

Langston Hughes, “The Weary Blues”

Hughes wrote “The Weary Blues” a few years after “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” but the two poems eventually appeared together in his debut collection of 1926, The Weary Blues. These poems are both concerned with finding new formal strategies to represent Black life and experience. In particular, they both feature experiments with meter and line length. The earlier poem uses meter to evoke the variable flow of a river as it wends through a landscape. The latter poem approximates blues rhythms to convey the experience of Black urban life.

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Like Hughes, Hurston was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Her novel, first published in 1937, explores themes that interested many figures in the movement, such as the struggle for Black liberation and fulfillment.

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