Rivers that Remain: Langston Hughes and Tess Taylor

I remember feeling moved by Dr. Smith-Mckoy’s reading “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” at the recent African-American read-in.  Her reading did justice to the fluid form and the intimate tone of the speaker. The speaker feels connected to rivers that are “ancient as the world and older than the/ flow of human blood in human veins” and connect the speaker with African-American history and heritage (line 2-3).  By recalling rivers like the Euphrates, the speaker acknowledges the African history reaches back to the beginning of humanity.

Yet, the speaker is not just telling the readers that this history exists; rather, the speaker is deeply connected with these rivers as if he has lived through all its history. The speaker can claim actions such as “I bathed,” “I built,” “I looked,” and “I heard” because the impact of this history directly affects him/her. Furthermore, history and heritage not only affects the speaker, but is part of his/her identity. The speaker confesses, “I’ve known rivers” and “My soul has grown deep like the rivers”.

The individual’s soul carries the dignity of this rich history, while also experiencing the consequences of corruption.  For example, the speaker recalls: “I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset,” indicating the tension of having a heritage and identity that is both beautiful yet tainted (line 9-10).

Much of Hughes’ poetry is a reminder that history does not disappear; these old rivers are physical reminders that people are deeply connected to both dignified and dark heritages.  This poem tells a different historical narrative (which is verified by physical nature) than what is often told.   

Tess Taylor’s poem “Eighteenth Century Remains”  traces physical objects or “remains” from the eighteenth century. Taylor’s choice of the word “Remains” functions as both noun and verb.  As a noun, the word indicates a literal objects from the past that still exist. As a verb, the word implies these historical objects have action and an operational presence in contemporary society.  

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“Eighteenth Century Remains”

By Tess Taylor

   Albemarle County

The ridge a half mile down from Monticello.

A pit cut deeper than the plow line.

Archaeologists plot the dig by scanning

plantation land mapped field

for carbon, ash, traces of human dwelling.

We stand amid blown cypresses.

Inheritors of absences, we peer

into the five-by-five foot ledge.

Unearthed painstakingly, these shards:

two pipe stems, seeds, three greening buttons.

Centuries-old hearthstones are still charred,

as if the fire is only lately gone.

“Did they collect these buttons to adorn?” But no one knows.

“Did they trade, use them for barter?”

Silence again.

Light, each delicate pipe stem,

something someone smoked at last

against a sill-log wall that passed as home,

a place where someone else collected

wedges of cast-off British willowware.

Between vines, a tenuous cocoon.

A grassy berm that was a road.

A swaying clue

faint as relief at finding something left

of lives held here that now vanish off

like blue smoke plumes I suddenly imagine—

which are not, will not, cannot be enough.