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Langston Hughes was born in Joplin,
Missouri, in 1902. After graduation from high school, he spent a year
in Mexico with his father, then a year studying at Columbia University.
His first poem in a nationally known magazine was "The Negro Speaks of
Rivers," which appeared in Crisis in 1921. In 1925, he was awarded the
First Prize for Poetry of the magazine Opportunity, the winning
poem being "The Weary Blues," which gave its title to his first book of
poems, published in 1926. As a result of his poetry, Mr. Hughes
received a scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he
won his B.A. in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Litt.D. by
his alma mater; he has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1935),
a Rosenwald Fellowship (1940), and an American Academy of Arts and
Letters Grant (1947). From 1926 until his death in 1967, Langston
Hughes devoted his time to writing and lecturing. He wrote poetry,
short stories, autobiography, song lyrics, essays, humor, and plays. A
cross section of his work was published in 1958 as The Langston
Hughes Reader.
Photo: Consuelo Kanaga
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Spanning five decades and comprising 868 poems (nearly 300 of which have never before appeared in book form),
this magnificent volume is the definitive sampling of a writer who has
been called the poet laureate of African America--and perhaps our
greatest popular poet since Walt Whitman. Here, for the first time, are
all the poems that Langston Hughes published during his lifetime,
arranged in the general order in which he wrote them and annotated by
Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel.
Alongside such famous works
as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Montage of a Dream Deferred, The
Collected Poems includes the author's lesser-known verse for children;
topical poems distributed through the Associated Negro Press; and poems
such as "Goodbye Christ" that were once suppressed. Lyrical and
pungent, passionate and polemical, the result is a treasure of a book,
the essential collection of a poet whose words have entered our common
language.
Praise for THE COLLECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES
"The ultimate book for both the dabbler and serious scholar.... [Hughes] is sumptuous and sharp, playful
and sparse, grounded in an earthy music.... This book is a glorious revelation."
--Boston Globe
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