Tired by Langston Hughes

A subtle call to action in a world gone wrong

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren't you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two-

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

Hello and welcome to words that burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This week’s poem is Tired by Langston Hughes. This is not the first poet of the Harlem Renaissance to be covered on the podcast, Gwendolyn Brooks and the oft overlooked Fenton Johnson  have also featured, both episodes are linked in the description. Langston Hughes, however, looms over both. James Mercer Langston Hughes is probably the most recognised figure of that massive literary movement¹

This is a deceptively short poem and a wonderful cure for the notion that ‘’real poetry’’, and I use heavy quotes there, is somehow lengthy and wordy. Here the poet lives up to their reputation as being an accessible poet.² This poem Tired seems designed to reach as many people as possible, it avoids putting people off with the so-called wall of text. It refuses to cloak its meaning in gorgeous abstract imagery or ornamentation. Instead Langston Hughes, chooses to deliver a succinct and impactful call to action, hiding as exhaustion. 

It seems lately that I am drawn more and more to poems that look unflinchingly at the state of the world. That is to say, that many of the poems I’m reading are written in reaction to the state of the world today or rather the frustration of comparing the world as it is, to the way we feel it should be. Hughes puts it simply in that first simple half:

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren't you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Here Hughes begins to weave his communication magic. His use of direct English is augmented by his choice of format; that second line aren’t you? Inviting us directly into conversation with him. This is no great rallying cry, no crushing weight of the responsibility of a revolution. Rather it is an appeal to our human nature through emotion; I’m so tired of waiting.  That most common of human emotions, especially today, is tiredness. Anyone reading or listening feels seen and heard. Those words sing to us. Inviting us gently to discourse.

He increases that appeal through direct language, verbs like  good, beautiful and kind are unambiguously positive, impossible to misconstrued and so difficult to ignore when they are absent.

Many of Hughes’ poems were short and to the point, for the simple reason, which he stated directly was: ‘’to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind”.³ He took that goal even further by mimicking the cadence, rhythms and techniques of African American folk music too. Here he is discussing it briefly in 1967:

‘’ later on I quite consciously begin to try to create poetry in the style of our folk songs   our spirituals and our blues and our work songs.’’⁴

This is how Hughes became a natural leader of the Harlem Renaissance. As academic Cheryl A. Wall put it: 

‘’The project of the New Negro Renaissance, as it was then called,

was to achieve through art the equality that black Americans had been

denied in the social, political, and economic realms. Segregation was the

law in much of the United States, and the practice in the rest. Despite the

creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP, founded in 1909) and the National Urban League

(founded in 1910), the fight for equality had been thwarted.’’⁵

In creating these direct, non alienating poems, Hughes found himself quickly becoming the Harlem Renaissance’s most popular writer. Given the nature of the poem, it’s even less surprising that Hughes found himself becoming a political figure.⁶

I am definitely not the first to notice this poem's appeal. In 2020 the poem had its fifteen minutes of fame so to speak,being shared like wildfire across social media. Writer Jasmine Harris documented the phenomenon in an article, writing:

‘’[the poem]  has been posted all over Twitter and Tumblr since late May, in response to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. In simple words that clearly resonates—I found a Tumblr post with 20,000 notes, and a tweet with more than 28,000 likes’’⁷

Harris goes on to note that while the first section appears everywhere, the second section of the poem is often left out:

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two-

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

There is an air of French revolution in that second part. Nothing so obvious as to be blatant violence, but enough to incite action in the listener. Let us take a knife is hard to ignore as a metaphor.  The poem has moved from a gentle sharing of exhaustion to a plan of action.

Hughes wrote this poem in 1930⁸ and was no doubt aware that things were not changing for black people in the United States. In 1937 he gave the speech, which echoed the sentiment of this poem:

“We are tired of a world where, when we raise our

voices against oppression, we are immediately jailed, intimidated, beaten,

sometimes lynched.’’⁹

Anyone would be tired in the face of such injustice. Many were, I mentioned Fenton Johnson at the top of the episode, another member of the Harlem renaissance. He also published a poem entitled Tired but ends in a bitter acceptance of the state of the world. Hughes would not grant himself or his reader this escape. His call to action calls for a removal of the things that have made it so.  

There is a recognition in the words cut the world in two that this undertaking is a herculean task that will leave his world unrecognisable but for Hughes only a radical course of action will reveal what worms are eating at the rind. 

That final line is insidious and one that burrowed its way into my own mind. I could not shake the notion that some systems in the world were rotten. It is no wonder this second half is often omitted from social media posts and pinterest. It lacks the gentle appeal of the first half. Its lines are full of sickening frustration and quiet radicalism. 

What was once a soft poem, exploring the exhaustion of modern life becomes a subtle demand for action from Hughes.

There is a strong subversive tone at work in the poem. This subversion was well trodden territory for Hughes, who spent much of his thirties exploring alternative ideologies, the type which might deliver African Americans from the dystopian conditions they were occupying.¹⁰

Many years later, in 1953, these political poems came back to haunt him as he was forced to testify before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Edward McCarthy.¹¹ This era became known as ‘’Mccarthyism.’’

Following this experience, which was harrowing as torture was alleged prior to the trial¹², Hughes stepped away from radical poetry.

Despite that, the legacy of this poem endures. It instantly struck a chord in me when I read it and based on 2020 did the same for thousands of people. It addresses the unease that many of us feel daily; that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. For Hughes it was civil rights, in 2020 it was Black Lives Matter and those issues of systemic racism still exist today. It could equally be applied to climate anxiety or political corruption too.

Crucially however, Hughes reminds us that all is not lost, through collective action; let us take a knife we might somehow set the course of the world right but more than that we must not give in and succumb to the exhaustion that is so omnipresent in modern times.

What did you think of the poem? I'd like to point out, as always, that this is my interpretation and as such very much up for debate. 

You can find the show notes for the episode in the description  below

If you enjoyed the poem and would like to get in touch check out the links in the description. I’m one instagram and twitter in case you’d like bonus content.

If you really enjoyed the episode please consider giving me a review wherever you listen, it helps me out massively.

I have an additional favour to ask this week: the Irish podcast awards are currently open for voting and the listeners choice award is linked below. If you’ve been enjoying the show please consider voting for it.

This week's episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Collopy, the music in this week's episode was by Mattia Vlad Morleo and is used under creative commons license, you can find a link to his work in the description.

1. Rampersad, Arnold (Introduction) (1997). Alain Locke (ed.). The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (1st Touchstone ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0684838311.

2.  Conan, Neil. “Celebrating The Legacy Of Langston Hughes.” Broadcast. Talk Of The Nation. NPR, February 1, 2012. 

3. Rampersad, Arnold. Essay. In The Life of Langston Hughes Vol.II, 414. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 

4. Langston Hughes Speaking at UCLA 2/16/1967. YouTube. UCLA Comm Studies, 2014.

5.  Wall, Cheryl A. “Chapter One: When the Negro Was in Vogue.” Essay. In The Harlem Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction, 20. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016

6. Rampersad, Arnold. Essay. In The Life of Langston Hughes Vol.II, 414. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 

7.  Harris, Jasmine“Langston Hughes Knows You're Tired-but He's Not Letting You off the Hook.” Electric Literature. Electric Lit, July 30, 2020. https://electricliterature.com/langston-hughes-knows-youre-tired-but-hes-not-letting-you-off-the-hook/. 

8. Hughes, Langston. “Tired .” New Masses, February 1931.

9. Graham, Shane D. “2. Marks of A Rebellious Slave.” Essay. In Cultural Entanglements Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature, 114. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

10.  Graham, Shane D. “2. Marks of A Rebellious Slave.” Essay. In Cultural Entanglements Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature, 114. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

11. Sharf, James C. (1981). "Testimony of Richard T. Seymour, before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senate Committee on the Judiciary". doi:10.1037/e578982009-004.

12.  Sharf, James C. (1981). "Testimony of Richard T. Seymour, before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Senate Committee on the Judiciary". doi:10.1037/e578982009-004.