The most popular historical poet in 2008, James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, dramatist, and even a short story writer. He was also a black, who were discriminated in his days.
It was his poems that intrigued me a lot; they are meaningful and left me deep in thought. For instance, the poem Life is Fine leads me to ponder that life is actually good if we think it the right way. I also like the way he stood out for his fellow black American through poem like I, Too, Sing America and Let America Be America Again. Some of his poem rhymes well, such as The Weary Blues.
Langston Hughes was born on 1 February 1902 in Joplin, Missouri to James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langsten. (His name is a mix of his parents'!) Both parents were mixed race, as Langston Hughes was of African American, European American and Native American descent. Parents divorced, he was raised by his grandmother in Kansas, and moved to Lincoln, Illinois. He started writing poetry there. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and another at Columbia University. All these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, seaman, etc. and moved to Washington D.C. in 1924 Langston Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
22 May 1967 was the fateful day. Langston Hughes died at the age of 65, from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer leading to the auditorium named for him within the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
The following are some poems by Langston Hughes :
The Negro Speaks of Rivers (also Hughes's signature poem)
DreamsHold fast to dreamsFor if dreams dieLife is a broken-winged birdThat cannot fly.Hold fast to dreamsFor when dreams goLife is a barren fieldFrozen with snow.
Outside sources : Wikipedia - Langston HughesPoets.org - Langston Hughes |
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