I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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2 comments:
The exquisite illustrations make the eloquent verses all the more accessible. Lewis is at his best here, and the use of watercolors to evoke the flow of a river is particularly apt. The artist's double-page depictions of black individuals-evocative portraits of faces, an image of a parent and child asleep in a hammock outside a "hut near the Congo," or a close-up of a pair of brown hands lifting an earthenware pot-dovetail perfectly with Hughes's words and ideas. A vivid gold-infused painting of a boy and his grandfather fishing in the Mississippi's muddy waters suggests a hope that the river and the African-American soul will endure.
...A visual paean to Hughes's enduring poem, Lewis's images make a personal connection to a taproot of feelings. The 12 lines of the poem, considered Hughes's signature song of the Harlem Renaissance, are poignantly expressed through the artist's trademark watercolors, which depict in successive double-page spreads black children playing by the Euphrates, a mother and child sleeping by the Congo and fishermen with a net waist-deep in the Nile. The penultimate image, also depicted on the cover, brings the poem into the present with a grandfather and child fishing by a modern Mississippi River bridge. Lewis states in a concluding note that he nearly drowned as a child, and his paintings are awash with emotion. While the picture-book format targets the book for young readers, the word "Negro" in the title may require some context. It has the capacity to reach far above the normal picture-book ages...The beautifully reverent, serene cover image will persuade all to look inside.
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