Raymond R. Patterson (1986)

Poet, writer, biographer, and professor of English at CCNY, Raymond R. Patterson was the founding director of the Langston Hughes Festival and continued to serve in this capacity until 1993. In such collections of poetry as 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Other Poems and Elemental Blues, Patterson drew on the poetic tradition of Wallace Stevens and others to construct a lyrical yet firmly ethical literary voice. His lyrical writing reshaped ordinary actions into profoundly meaningful moments: “We are told that the seeds / Of rainbows are not unlike / A blackman’s tear.” In his poetry, Patterson documented the social anguish of his time, as when he wrote about the assassination of Malcolm X, which devastated a generation suffering the “hungers of their living.” His work has enlightened generations of readers and students, and he will be remembered as an original commemorator of the ways Langston Hughes transformed the written word and the society around it.