In the post 9/11 United States of America, we're suddenly asking ourselves, how do we define "united"? Do we mean "assembled," celebrating the inevitable clashes that result from our cultural differences? Or do we mean "assimilated," sacrificing the liveliness of those differences for the safety of homogeneity?

The African-American poet Langston Hughes, whose centenary will be celebrated Sunday, February 3 at 2 p.m. at the Rhode Island School of Design Auditorium, possessed one of our most eloquent and prescient voices on the question of American identity. In tribute, the Seventh Annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading, a free event, will feature music, video, food, and readings of Hughes's poetry by more than 100 participants. James Montford, head of community programs at the museum, advises people to arrive early: "This is one of those events where, whether as a participant or an audience member, you'll be saying afterwards, 'I was there!' "

The growing popularity of the event, plus the importance of the centenary, led festival founder Anne Edmonds Clanton to dream big this year. Clanton, who organizes the confab with help from RISD and the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities, proudly notes that the universal response to her goal of 100 readers was, "You're crazy!" Participants include many local luminaries, as well as a group of students from Hope High School, "who come every year and bring down the house," she says.

Clanton believes that the variety of those clamoring to read is explained by the breadth and variety of Hughes's voice and vision. "He was a very special man, one concerned about his people, not necessarily those at the high end, but in the middle, and damn near the bottom," she says. "And his work runs the gamut, from philosophical, to silly, to profound, to funny. One I love is 'A Little Lyric of Great Importance.' The whole poem is: 'I wish the rent were heaven-sent.' It's slight, but who hasn't had a day of praying to God for the rent money?"

Hughes's work remains highly relevant. "He identified as a black poet at a time when other black poets didn't want to be known by their race," Clanton says. "He couldn't understand that, he loved who he was, who he came from. And he wrote a great deal about bringing the races together, dreaming a world, where, as he put it, 'Justice is a blind goddess.' Could anything speak more clearly to us in this moment?"

Issue Date: February 1 - 7, 2002