The Collected Poems of Langston HughesThe Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

"Here, for the first time, is a complete collection of Langston Hughes's poetry - 860 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during five turbulent decades, from the 1920s through the 1960s. The editors, Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, have aimed to recover all of the poems that Hughes published in his lifetime - in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, and in his books of verse. They present the poems in the general order in which Hughes wrote them, and also provide illuminating notes and chronology of the poet's life. Arnold Rampersad, the author of the esteemed two-volume biography of Langston Hughes, has written a perceptive and moving introduction that throws light on Langston Hughes's distinctive voice as a poet and the world in which he lived. From his first nationally published poem at the age of nineteen in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," to his final collection, The Panther and the Lash, published after his death in 1967, Langston Hughes, once called "the original jazz poet," above all sang of the African American people. Poems of the 1920s: Hughes brings the world of Harlem to life in verses such as "Lenox Avenue: Midnight," "Water-Front Streets," "To Midnight Nan at Leroy's," and "Drama for a Winter Night (Fifth Avenue)"; he revels int he Paris of the 1920s; he travels along the west coast of Africa for the first time. And always he translates into song the joys and lamentations of people everywhere. The 1930s: Hughes's poems reflect deeper ideological concerns, from the Scottsboro Boys injustice to the plight of the Spanish people - "Goodbye Christ," "Good Morning Revolution," "Let American Be America Again," "Chant for May Day," "Lynching Song," and "An Open Letter to the South." IN the 1940s: the Shakespeare in Harlem poems sing of the lover man, the "Girl Whose Name Is Mud," the gypsy, the pawnbroker, the "Man Who's Gone," and many others. In the 1950s, with McCarthyism rampant, Hughes's poetry becomes less ideological but grows full of fierce ironies, as in the discordant be-bop rhythms of Montage of a Dream Deferred. In the 1960s, the civil-rights movement gives rise to "The Backlash Blues" and the dazzling jazz rhythms of Ask Your Mama. The volume concludes with a group of topical poems circulated by Hughes through the Associated Negro Press, and a group of his poems for children. This tremendously rich and varied volume will serve as an exciting introduction to the work of the man saluted as "the most prominent Afro-American poet of the century" by Rita Dove and as "one of the indelible" by Gwendolyn Brooks. It will also be an essential source for those who want to read Langston Hughes's poetry again and again or seek to discover some of his lesser-known treasures." --