Langston Hughs

Langston Hughes Poetry Project
One of the most subjective writers of the twentieth century, praised for his original style, James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Missouri February 1, 1902. As a child his parents divorced and he went to live with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas until he was twelve years old. After most of his childhood living with his grandmother, she passed and later the next year he was reunited with his mother by moving to Lincoln, Illinois when he was thirteen in the summer of 1915. Later on in 1921 Hughes enrolled in Columbia University in New York City and dropped out after one short first year, then working odd jobs while he traveled around the world to various countries in Africa and Europe. Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, columnist and was part of the Harlem Resonance. His poems weren’t greatly received by black individuals during his time because they thought that he was portraying black life in a very unattractive way with his subject matter and simplicity of his poems. Hoyt W. Fuller describes Hughes’ reason for highlighting black life because he identified with them “he saw more truth” in writing about his people. The two poems that I brought today are The Dream Keeper and Dreams, in-between the poems Hughes give his own views and thoughts about dreams and the importance that young people especially have something to aspire to in life.   Hughes was the first black American to earn his living solely from writing and public lectures. He was a very eclectic writer because of his life experiences, by the time he was twelve he had already lived in six different cites. Fuller elaborates on Hughes that “the key to Langston Hughes… was the poet’s deceptive and profound simplicity”. When Hughes was publishing some of his most notable works in the first half of the century, his style was most recognized for its simplistic character while other poets focuses of using individualistic and complicated...