Kimberly Garrett Brown: Letter to Langston Hughes

Dear Langston,

It’s February 1st, and I’m thinking of you. Today, you would be 123 years old. It’s not a particularly significant marker, but this day never passes without me feeling the need to celebrate your significance as a Black poet. Most years, I let the feeling pass without doing anything. But this year, it feels important to take the time to acknowledge you and the effect your poetry has had on my life.

I was never a fan of poetry because, in grade school, it felt like a foreign language I didn’t understand. I couldn’t connect to it. The images and symbolism were lost to me. It made me feel like something was wrong with me or that I was not smart enough. Consequently, I wanted no parts of poetry.

When I started to study writing in college, I was so relieved that though poetry was still talked about, I didn’t have to spend time trying to figure it out. But as I interacted with more writers, I encountered people who clung to stanzas from poems like verses of scripture breathed from God. I found myself looking for something to move me. I wanted to understand. But meanings and significance still escaped me. It became easier to convince myself that I hated poetry. And for the longest time, that worked for me – well, sort of. It still felt as if I was missing something.

I began a quest to understand poetry better. I bought various general poetry books, looking for something to connect to. I happened on a collection of poems called American Negro Poetry, edited by Arna Bontemps in 1963. Admittedly, I was somewhat familiar with your poetry, though I probably couldn’t have called any one poem by name. Nonetheless, it was in this collection that where I first read “Mother to Son.”   

The line, “Life ain’t been no crystal stair,” spoke to my soul. I not only understood the symbolism, I lived it. As a Black mother of two sons and a daughter, it felt like someone understood me. I had often experienced life with “…tacks in it, / and splinters, / and boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor—/ bare.” The mother’s encouragement to her son to keep going gave me hope. And now, as I think of that poem, I can’t help but think of my son, who was lost to suicide. I wish that there had been a way for me, as his mother, to impart this sentiment to him to keep going. Not to give up.

Langston, your poetry continues to speak to what being Black in the United States means, even after all these years. Your images and words identify the challenges of ethnicity, race, and gender. The poem “Troubled Woman” had such an effect on me that it inspired a whole novel. When I first read it, I felt “Bowed by / Weariness and pain.” It makes me sad to remember those days and nights when the responsibility of my children, the feeling of insignificance, and the frustration that I hadn’t become what I had hoped to be left me feeling overwhelmed and alone. But your poetry made me feel less alone. I felt seen.

After spending time with your poetry, I understood that representation of one’s experience and culture is so important. Your poetry showed me how the right words in the hands of a gifted poet can be a balm to the soul. And because of you, I have continued to read other poetry, looking for the same type of connection that I felt when I read “Mother to Son” and “Troubled Woman.”  

So, on this special day, the day of your birth, I want to thank you for the gift of your poetry.

With much gratitude,

Kim

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KIMBERLY GARRETT BROWN is Publisher and Executive Editor of Minerva Rising Press. Her work has appeared in Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A Collection of Essays, Poems and Personal Narratives, The Feminine Collective, Compass Literary Magazine, Today’s Chicago Woman, Chicago Tribune, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her first novel, Cora’s Kitchen, was published by Inanna Publications in September 2022. It was a finalist in the 2018 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and the 2016 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. She earned her MFA at Goddard College.

CORA’S KITCHEN

Cora James, a 35-year-old Black librarian in Harlem, dreams of being a writer. Torn between her secret passion and the duties of a working wife and mother in 1928, Cora strikes up correspondence with renowned poet Langston Hughes, who encourages her to pursue her dream. Duty frustrates Cora again, this time when she’s called upon to fill in for her cousin Agnes while she recovers from a brutal beating by her husband Bud.

Working as a cook for a white woman, Cora discovers both time to write and an unlikely ally in Mrs. Eleanor Fitzgerald, who becomes friend, confidante, and patron, encouraging Cora to rise above what’s commonly thought of as “a woman’s lot.” Yet, through a series of startling developments in her dealings with the white family, Cora’s journey to becoming a writer takes her to the brink of losing everything, including her life.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing