Room Full of Beef Sags Like a Heavy Load
Thinking back on my slog through the Los Angeles Unified School District, there were a very few realities that kept me moving frontward. Ane reality was that high school would eventually end. The number 2 bright spot illuminating my way through high school was the extraordinary literature I was being introduced to by some truly dandy English language teachers. In 7th course, along with Greek myths and a few Dorothy Parker stories, thankfully Langston Hughes poems were on the teaching program.
Who was Langston Hughes?
Langston Hughes was the chronicler of African American life in Harlem, New York City, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Hughes set out to portray the stories of African-American life that represented their actual culture—including the piercing heartbreak and the joy of everyday life in Harlem.
Hughes listed Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman every bit his poetic influences, simply the influence of jazz also institute its way into Hughes's work. Hughes's recurring images and his innovative phrasing helped shape the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s: that fourth dimension of tremendous creativity when African American arts flourished with Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston, among others.
After his death in 1967 from cancer, the abode of Langston Hughes, located at 20 East 127th Street, was given landmark condition by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street goes past the name of "Langston Hughes Place."
The best Langston Hughes poems
My People
The night is beautiful,
And so the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the optics of my people.
Beautiful, likewise, is the sun.
Cute, besides, are the souls of my people.
Kids Who Die
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As E'er,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.
Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.
Suicide's Note
The at-home,
Absurd confront of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
When Sue Wears Red
When Susanna Jones wears red
Her face is similar an aboriginal cameo
Turned chocolate-brown by the ages.
Come with a blast of trumpets,
Jesus!
When Susanna Jones wears ruby
A queen from some time-dead Egyptian night
Walks once again.
Accident trumpets, Jesus!
And the beauty of Susanna Jones in red
Burns in my center a dear-fire sharp similar pain.
Sweet silver trumpets,
Jesus!
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Concur fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a arid field
Frozen with snow.
Evil
Looks like what drives me crazy
Don't accept no effects on you—
Just I'm gonna keep on at it
Till it drives yous crazy, too.
American Heartbreak
I am the American heartbreak—
Rock on which Freedom
Stumps its toe—
The great mistake
That Jamestown
Made long agone.
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry upward
similar a raisin in the lord's day?
Or fester like a sore—
And so run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or chaff and sugar over—
like a syrupy sugariness?
Maybe it only sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
(To Due west.Eastward.B. DuBois)
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers aboriginal as the world and older than the flow
of human being blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and information technology lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above information technology.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
downwardly to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom
plough all gilt in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Theme for English B
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come up out of y'all—
Then, it will exist true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am 20-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, so here
to this college on the hill in a higher place Harlem.
I am the only colored educatee in my class.
The steps from the hill pb down into Harlem,
through a park, and so I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, 7th, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
upward to my room, sit, and write this page:
It's not like shooting fish in a barrel to know what is true for yous or me
at twenty-two, my historic period. Just I guess I'thousand what
I feel and meet and hear, Harlem, I hear yous:
hear yous, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this folio.
(I hear New York, besides.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in dear.
I like to piece of work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipage for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I approximate being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Existence me, it volition not be white.
Simply information technology will exist
a office of you lot, instructor.
You lot are white—
yet a part of me, every bit I am a office of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps y'all don't desire to be a part of me.
Nor do I often desire to be a part of you.
Simply we are, that'southward true!
Every bit I learn from you,
I guess you larn from me—
although yous're older—and white—
and somewhat more than complimentary.
This is my page for English B.
____________________
The work of Langston Hughes is in the public domain if y'all desire to read more.
Source: https://bookriot.com/langston-hughes-poems/
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