This Saturday Baltimore poets Alan Baryish and Gregg Mosson will be performing a selection of Langston Hughes' poetry at the Baltimore Ethical Society in downtown Baltimore. The performance will look at Hughes' autobiographical poems, Harlem scenes, and jazz poems. Langston Hughes is an early 20th. century African-American poet and central figure in the Harlem Renaissance literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Baltimore Ethical Society (BES) is hosting the reading as part of its Saturday night entertainment series, and the reading begins at 7 PM.

Donations of $2 to $5 are asked, and coffee and snacks are provided. An open mike follows. The BES is located at 306 West Franklin Street, Suite 102.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes

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 bathe 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.