ommunity speak and are spoken about. In other words, Hughes becomes a medium, a sensitive and subtle medium, but a medium nonetheless. In a seemingly simple form, Hughes serves as a sounding board for the articulation of people who are usually voiceless.The work's modernity is the self-reflective nature of all the voiced speaking, and in speaking, coming to consciouness of themselves and their environment. Time and time again we hear voices self-consciously grappling with their Harlem realities, which include an international awareness of African American, West Indian, and African bonding. In the African American context "modernity" specifically refers to the post-Reconstruction, nothern-oriented urbanization of African American life. No presixties black poet was more complete in expressing the black urban viewpoint than Hughes.The ease with which Hughes voices the various personalities and points of view belies both complexity and progressiveness of his achievement. Because of the brevity of the poems, Hughes's points are often made in passing and require reflection in order to appreciate just how many short poems that make up the Montage series. This poem perfectly illustrates Hughes's musical use of bebop rythms and phrasing mated to subtle social commentary.Most critics consider Hughes reticent on the subject of homosexuality, yet Montage includes this double critique-one of homophobia and heterosexism and one of the criminalization of sexual activities.Cafe: 3 a.m.Detective from the vice squadwith weary sadistic eyesspotting fairies.Degenerates,some folks say.But God, Nature,or somebody made them that way.Police lady or Lesbianover there?Where?Compare this to the work of any other poet publishing with a major house in the early 1950's.In the headnote to Montage, Hughes declares, "In the terms of current Afro-American popular music and sources from which it has progressed--jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-b...
