I had a different poem ready for this week. But I decided to run it next week. I decided to do this while writing the final item for the newsletter that I'll be sending out in a few minutes. This item is about the controversy over New Jersey's poet laureate, an old radical, left wing African-American hack named Amiri Baraka. I got to thinking as I was writing the piece how much I have enjoyed the poetry of Langston Hughes over the years. He was a real black poet, one with heart, soul, character, courage, and bottomless talent. So I decided to go with one of my all-time favorites from Hughes this week. It isn't his best work. But the lesser works of Hughes were better than the best works of most poets. I just happen to like this one.

Hughes' career was so long and his accomplishments so great that it is impossible for me to summarize them in this short space. So I'll just offer a few points about his life, and close with the recommendation that if you like poetry and haven't read Hughes, then you're missing a treat.

Hughes was born in 1902. He graduated from high school in Cleveland, and at eighteen went to Mexico where he taught English for a year and half. He spent a year at Columbia University and some time working on the high seas. He then went to Paris with seven dollars in his pocket. He stayed in France for ten months, worked his way through Italy and Spain, and returned to New York with twenty-five cents in his pocket. Working as a busboy in Washington, he was discovered by the poet Vachel Lindsay, who read several of his poems to a fashionable audience in the very hotel where Hughes bused dishes.

Hughes published his first volume of poetry in 1926. It was called The Weary Blues. He became one of the celebrated young talents of the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote his first novel, Not Without Laughter, in 1930. He went to Russia in 1932, wrote some favorable things about the Communists there, which caused some trouble in later years. But when World War II broke out, Hughes lent his patriotic pen to the war movement. He died in 1967 after a long and distinguished career in American letters, in which he produced volumes of wonderful poems, books, short stories, and plays, and gained the love and respect of audiences everywhere, black and white.