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(More customer reviews)I had read several Hughes poems before buying this book, but I will admit that I had no grasp on the extent of his talent. These vivid poems were chosen by Hughes personally before his death in 1967.
They do so well to paint a picture of the time he lived -- of the blues, of love, of passion, of choices. He writes about faith and protest in a way that will move you.
I have read all of the poems exactly as they are placed in the book several times. I think I keep going back to them because this is poetry free of pretense -- it is grounded in reality and in sorrow.
Independent of age, of your ethnicity, and of your literary grasp, you will enjoy these poems. Simple and superb -- read them out loud.
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With the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night." They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture. They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror-- and the marrow of the bone of life."The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.
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