LANGSTON HUGHES
1 Among the many talentedAfricanAmerican writers connected with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, Langston Hughes was the most popular in his time. His two most important achievements were the incorporation of the rhythms of black music into his poetry and the creation of an authentic black folk speaker in the character of JesseB、Semple. Through both poetry and storytelling, Hughes captured in written form the dominant oral and improvisatory traditions of black culture.
2Langston Hughes was born in Missouri in 1902. He began to write poetry in high school and later attendedColumbia University in New York.After one year at university, Hughes commenced a nomadic life in the United States andEurope. He shipped out as a merchant marine and worked in a Paris nightclub, all the while writing and publishing poetry. His prolific literary career was launched in 1926 with the publication of his first book, The WearyBlues, a collection of poems onAfricanAmerican themes set to rhythms from jazz and blues. His first novel appeared in 1930, and from that point on Hughes was known as "the bard of Harlem."
3In the activist 1930s, Hughes was a public figure. He worked as a journalist, published works in several media, and foundedAfricanAmerican theaters in New York,Chicago, and LosAngeles. Hughes’s concern with race, mainly in an urban setting, is evident in his poetry, plays, screenplays, novels, and short stories. His poetry includes lyrics about black life and black pride as well as poems of racial protest. His major prose writings are those concerned with the character JesseB、Semple, a shrewd but supposedly ignorant Harlem resident nicknamed Simple. Simple was a wise fool, an honest man who saw through sham and spoke plainly. The Simple stories were originally published as newspaper sketches and later collected in five book volumes.
4 By the 1960s, readers preferred themes that reflected the struggles of the times, and Hughes’s writings were overshadowed by those of a younger generation of black poets. However, in more recent decades, scholars and readers have rediscovered Hughes and regard him as a major literary and social influence. His poetry and stories remain an enduring legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, and for this reason his position in theAmerican canon is secure.
The word prolific in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to
A、surprising
B、transitory
C、mature
D、productive