Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
"Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" is a curated collection that showcases the profound and diverse body of work by the influential African American poet, Langston Hughes. The anthology pulls together poems from various earlier collections, including notable works like "The Weary Blues," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "I, Too." Hughes's poetry is characterized by its exploration of black identity, reflecting both the struggles and resilience of the African American experience. Through vivid imagery and rich cultural references, he addresses themes of racial adversity, pride, joy, and self-affirmation.
Notable poems, such as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," delve into the historical and spiritual significance of rivers in black culture, symbolizing strength and continuity. Hughes often incorporates elements of blues and jazz, using rhythm and musicality to convey the emotional landscape of his characters. Works like "The Weary Blues" exemplify this approach, blending melancholy with a sense of hope and resilience. Ultimately, Hughes's poetry seeks to affirm the identities of black Americans as integral members of society, envisioning a future free from prejudice and filled with recognition of their beauty and contributions.
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Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
First published: 1959
The Work
The poems of Langston Hughes’s Selected Poems of Langston Hughes were gathered by the poet from several of his earlier collections, including: The Weary Blues (1926), Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), Dear Lovely Death (1931), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Fields of Wonder (1947), One Way Ticket (1949), and Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). Representative of the body of Hughes’s poetry, the collection includes his best poems: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “Song for a Dark Girl,” “Sylvester’s Dying Bed,” “I, Too,” “Montage of a Dream Deferred,” and “Refugee in America.”
Hughes’s poetry is an exploration of black identity, not only the sorrows and tribulations faced by black Americans but also the warm joy and humor of Hughes’s people. He writes in “Negro”: “I am a Negro:/ Black as the night is black,/ Black like the depths of my Africa.” This is a resolute proclamation confronting racial adversity: “The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo./ They lynch me still in Mississippi.” Hughes refuses, however, to allow his poetry to become a podium for anger; rather, he offers readers portraits of the black experience and, consequently, draws his readers into a nearer understanding of black identity.
One of the strongest of Hughes’s poems is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The poem muses upon what rivers mean to black culture and how the rivers symbolize the strength and longevity of a proud race:
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
The beauty of the poem, which reads like a hymn or spiritual, is unmistakable and permanent.
Elsewhere, Hughes experiments with blues rhythms and jazz improvisations, as in “The Weary Blues”:
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
The blues touch upon black sorrow, but the music of the blues makes its listeners feel better. Some of Hughes’s characters, as found in the “Madam to You” sequence, are not blue, or troubled, or even angry. Rather, they are secure and pleased with themselves. In “Madam’s Calling Cards,” Alberta K. Johnson tells the printer: “There’s nothing foreign/ To my pedigree:/ Alberta K. Johnson—/ American that’s me.”
Ultimately, Hughes’s objective seems to be to provide blacks with identities as Americans, living in a democracy that ensures life without prejudice. Thus, in “I, Too,” a poem echoing Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the poet looks to a future when a black man can “be at the table/ When company comes” and that “they’ll see/ How beautiful I am/ And be ashamed.”
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Langston Hughes. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.
Emanuel, James A. Langston Hughes. New York: Twayne, 1967.
Miller, R. Baxter. The Art of Imagination of Langston Hughes. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1989.