Hughes writes about a rainbow of topics, not all of them serious. So when I ran into this book at Barnes and Noble a few years back, I just had to get it.Īnd I’ve been slowly reading through it ever since, savoring the verse and the rhythm and the words. Suddenly, I loved the lyrical quality that separates poetry from prose. I didn’t care much for poetry at that point in my life, but reading Hughes changed that almost instantly. I haunted the library that summer, looking for poems I’d skipped over. I started picking up all the Hughes I could get my hands on. And, suddenly, I felt like I could read Bontemps and McKay and understand them, too. You might be angry one day, despondent the next, okay with it a few days later, and then back to anger by the end of the week. And the reactions to this situation can vary from day to day. But a dream deferred leaves you with hope, leaves you hanging on. When a dream is crushed, you can let it go and start to heal. In some ways, a dream deferred is worse than a dream completely crushed. I knew what it meant to have a dream deferred. It made me vaguely uncomfortable to try to understand – how could I, an Asian teen living in the mostly-Caucasian suburbs and attending a predominantly Hispanic school, understand the woes and triumphs of a black man fighting for human rights in 1920s Harlem? For the most part, I felt like a poser whilst reading it – I hadn’t really experienced the oppression or suffering in my fourteen years of life that Arna Bontemps and Claude McKay were describing. The book had a section on the Harlem Renaissance. I was part of our school’s Academic Challenge Bowl team (yes, it’s even nerdier than it sounds) and one of my assignments was to read through this fat anthology of American Literature. I first discovered Langston Hughes in high school. When I hear a really good performance, it makes me want to write songs.Īnd after reading The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, I want to write poetry so badly that all of my thoughts have been forming in blank verse for days. When I read a really good book, it makes me want to write fiction. When I’ve seen someone do something really well, it often inspires me to try it for myself – especially as it pertains to writing. Went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
Awesome and passionate and stirring and lovely, all in ways a 21st century Midwestern white girl probably isn't fully qualified to appreciate.
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