Our Poetic Expression – Poetry

Each of these poets use the creative medium to reflect on American society. In “200 Years of Afro-American Poetry” (1973), Langston Hughes details how most Black poets of his day and a hundred years before are protest poets for art is “to give adequate comment on what living is like in the poet’s own time.” Dunbar's use of dialect diction reflects on the vernacular speech of the period of enslavement that was a recent memory to his parents. Several of Murray’s poems address Civil Rights era conflicts for racial, gender, or economic equality, making them overtly political while containing her personal emotions.