Children’s Rhymes

“The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes (1926)

“The Weary Blues” is one of Langston Hughes’ most famous poems. As with “Children’s Rhymes,” the poem utilizes assonance and reflects Hughes' drive to create poems that sound like jazz or blues. Similar to “Children’s Rhymes,” the poem deals with the difficulties Black people face in the United States. Yet the end of “Children’s Rhymes” ends on a somewhat optimistic note with the narrator disrupting the misleading Pledge of Allegiance, while the end of “The Weary Blues” is rather bleak, as the person in the poem “slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”

“I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1926)

“I, Too” is another of Langston Hughes’ well-known poems. This poem, too, tackles race in the United States, although it does so with optimism. At first, the Black speaker must eat in the kitchen, but they will “eat well” and “grow strong” and soon eat at the table. The speaker reaffirms their beauty and their Americanness. Put in conversation with “Children’s Rhymes,” “I, Too” suggests that liberty and justice can be for everybody, so the lies detected by the speaker are vanquishable.

“Saturday’s Child” by Countee Cullen (1947)

Countee Cullen was a consequential poet and a part of the Harlem Renaissance. His poem “Saturday’s Child” tackles many of the themes in “Children’s Rhymes.” Each poem deals with the impact of race on children in America, although Cullen’s poem specifically demonstrates how race impacts a Black person as a baby; thus, the hardships start right away. “I cut my teeth as the black raccoon,” says the speaker in Cullen’s poem. “And Pain godfathered me.” Like “Children’s Rhymes,” Cullen’s poem features a set stanza length—four-line stanzas called quatrains. Although the rhymes in “Saturday’s Child” aren’t quite as agile as those in “Children’s Rhymes.”

“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath (1960)

In “Children’s Rhymes,” Langston Hughes uses a child speaker to confront the grave injustices of racism in the United States. In “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath uses a childlike speaker who touches on the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. Like Hughes’ poem, “Daddy” features quintains and emphasizes melody and diverse rhymes. However, Plath’s poem is controversial since she wasn’t Jewish and didn’t experience the Nazi atrocities. The two poems demonstrate the relevance of authorial context. The context of Langston Hughes’ life links him to the speaker of “Children’s Rhymes,” which lends his views on race in America credibly and authenticity. Meanwhile, Plath’s authorial context separates her from the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Plath grew up in a non-Jewish, middle-class home around Boston, so some think that she did not have the authority to speak about the Holocaust and Nazism in such a juvenile tone.