Langston+Hughes

uagreeks.uark.edu 25 Feb,2009 Born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. As a small child Hughe's parents got divorced. His father split to Mexico and had to live with his grandmother until he was thirteen. At the same age he moved to Lincoln, Illinois to live with his mother and her husband. They all eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio, but in Illinois is the place where he started to write poetry. Seeing that poetry was his gift Langston spent a year at [|Columbia University] and even Mexico. Through his years at the University, Langston held numerous jobs such as: busboy, launderer, assistant cook, and even travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In 1924 Langston moved to Washington D.C. where Alfred A. Knopf published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues. Although he spent a year at Columbia he finished his last three years at [|Lincoln University]. In 1930 his first book was published titled Not without Laughter which won the Harmon gold medal. Hughes had three influences in his life, Paul Lawerence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. Hughes wrote short stories, plays, poems, novels, and is known for influencing jazz in which he did some writing for "Montage of a Dream Deferred". Unlike other poets in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes wanted to portray something different. He wanted to write about actual black culture then simple African-American's personal lives and experinces. He talked about laughter, love, and music.

Sadly, Langston died of complications of prostate cancer on May 22, 1967. Though one of the greatest African-American writers has gone we still can find him in his great poems, short stories and novels today. Hughes wrote eleven plays and numerous stories. He will forever be missed.   **__Poetry__** //Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz// (1961) //Collected Poems of Langston Hughes// (1994) //Dear Lovely Death// (1931) //Fields of Wonder// (1947) //Fine Clothes to the Jew// (1927) //Freedom's Plow// (1943) //Montage of a Dream Deferred// (1951) //One-Way Ticket// (1949) //Scottsboro Limited// (1932) //Selected Poems// (1959) //Shakespeare in Harlem// (1942) //The Dream Keeper and Other Poems// (1932) //The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times// (1967) //The Weary Blues// (1926)

Citations: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83 Copyright © 1997 - 2009 by Academy of American Poets.