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Hughes; poet,
playwright, novelist. The fact that he is commemorated as a renowned black poet instead of simply as a poet
of great worth and value recalls the fact that slavery and its antecedents are
still a factor on the American body politic. Hughes was born in 1902 in
While
Hughes’ poetry often speaks uniquely of the experience of black people, his
work is also possessed
of an innate compassion and perceptiveness that is universal among the
dispossessed be they poor whites, Native Americans, or others.
Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a
leak.
Don’t you ‘member I told you about it
Way last week?
Landlord, landlord,
These steps if broken
down.
When you come up
yourself
It’s a wonder you don’t fall down.
Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well that’s Ten Bucks more’n I’ll
pay you
Till you fix this
house up new.
What? You gonna get eviction
orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gona take my furniture and
ThrOW it in the street?
Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on—till you get through.
You ain’t gonna
be able to say a word
If land my fist on you.
Police! Police!
Come and get t his man!
He’s trying to ruin
the government
And overturn the land!
Copper’s whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct station.
Iron cell.
Headlines in press:
MAN THREATENS LANDLORD
.
. .
TENANT HELD NO BAIL
.
. .
JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL.
§
American
Heartbreak
I am the American
heartbreak—
Rock on which
Freedom
Stumps its toe—
The great mistake
That
Made long ago.
§
Café:
Detectives from
the vice squad
With weary
sadistic eyes
Spotting fairies.
Degenerates,
Some folks say.
But God, Nature,
Or somebody
Made them that
way.
Police lady or Lesbian
Over there?
Where?
§
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
§
An Excerpt from
“Cultural Exchange”
…Dreams and nightmares!
Nightmares, dreams, oh!
Dreaming that the Negroes
Of the South have taken over--
Voted all the Dixiecrats
Right out of power--
Comes the COLORED HOUR:
Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!
Culture, they say, is
a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammy.
Hurry up!
Make haste!
§
Hughes
stated that the poets who influenced him the most were Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. Hughes was an authoritative voice in the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920’s. He. He died from complications of prostate cancer in
1967. The residence he occupied at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem is
now an official landmark of the city of New York and the street itself, East
127th Street is now known as "Langston Hughes Place."
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