Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
I'm not going to say I understand all the poetry here, but I do understand some of it so I'm starting to feel very much encouraged -- this is such an improvement over my previous poetic cluelessness.
For anyone who does not know, Hughes was an American poet who wrote during the early days of the Civil Rights movement and I'm beginning to suspect he's the origin of the phrase "a dream deferred" but I'll have to check up on that. Most of his poetry concerns the lives and difficulties of blacks in America, esp. the South, during the mid-century. The wording goes from being very specific to being, well, poetic:
American Heartbreak
I am the American heartbreak -- / Rock on which Freedom / Stumps its toe -- / The great mistake / That Jamestown / Made long ago.
And most of them are short like that tho there is one, Freedom's Plow, that I would call epic and it goes on for several pages. Really as much of a short story about the history of America and his hopes for its future as a poem. I almost wished that one went on longer, I was enjoying it so much.
Of all the poems here my absolute favorite is this one:
Dream Dust
Gather out of star-dust / Earth-dust, / Cloud-dust, / Storm-dust, / And splinters of hail, / One handful of dream-dust / Not for sale.
I love that, I can hear it being sung as a lullaby.
For anyone who does not know, Hughes was an American poet who wrote during the early days of the Civil Rights movement and I'm beginning to suspect he's the origin of the phrase "a dream deferred" but I'll have to check up on that. Most of his poetry concerns the lives and difficulties of blacks in America, esp. the South, during the mid-century. The wording goes from being very specific to being, well, poetic:
American Heartbreak
I am the American heartbreak -- / Rock on which Freedom / Stumps its toe -- / The great mistake / That Jamestown / Made long ago.
And most of them are short like that tho there is one, Freedom's Plow, that I would call epic and it goes on for several pages. Really as much of a short story about the history of America and his hopes for its future as a poem. I almost wished that one went on longer, I was enjoying it so much.
Of all the poems here my absolute favorite is this one:
Dream Dust
Gather out of star-dust / Earth-dust, / Cloud-dust, / Storm-dust, / And splinters of hail, / One handful of dream-dust / Not for sale.
I love that, I can hear it being sung as a lullaby.