This post was submitted by selena

In high school, I imagine we read “What Happens to a Dream Deferred” because the language is straightforward, it is useful to illustrate the use of simile, and it’s historically important. I bet many of us can almost recite it from memory.

But there’s something rote about that way I’ve learned Hughes’ work. And I’ve never considered any of Hughes poetry removed from the oddly canonized place his work lives in elementary education.

Yesterday I found copy of a Hughes book called “The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times.” This copy was published in 1967—the same year that Hughes died. It’s strange to hold a book that was read when “our times” was current. It put me in a place to consider what it would have been like to read Hughes work not as a historical artifact, but as present and engaged. And it also made me wonder whether the title could live up to its claim—whether his poems could still be poems of today.

I opened the book to this:

By what sends
the white kids
I ain’t sent:
I know I can’t
be President.

Certainly that says something about poems of our times.

What really struck me reading through these poems was the forceful authority of the speaker. Hughes generally wasn’t using his poems to work through personal issues or explore experiences he had—and even when he was, his personality and experience is strangely unreachable, impenetrable.

Instead, the voice Hughes uses speaks directly to you, the reader, telling you something he sees and knows, and forcing you to acknowledge it, too. Often, this makes you feel uncomfortable as a reader—the issues he addresses are difficult and sometimes indicting. Take this one, “Dinner Guest: Me”

I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
to probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A—
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraise de bois,
”I’m so ashamed of being white.”

The lobster is delicious
The wine divine,
And the center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, can wait.

This is not the Hughes I read in high school. Many of these poems grapple with issues like race and war (and their intersection)—while the poem we all memorized has words like “dream” and “sugary sweet.” Ok, it also has a festering sore, but the point is it’s largely apolitical. It’s a rumination.

Which is not to say our favorite anthology piece is a total anomaly. There are a few poems that seem to strike that same tone of optimism. These poems are like little notes to himself. They are not allegorical or didactic in the way some of his other poems are. I love how brief and simple they are, how unconcerned with allusion or wordplay, and how confident. It’s a commanding voice, and it sticks with you. Here are a few of those:

Frosting
Freedom
Is just frosting
On somebody else’s
Cake —

And so must be
Till we
Learn how to
Bake.

History
The past has been a mint
Of blood and sorrow.
That must not be
True of tomorrow.

Words Like Freedom
There are words like Freedom
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heartstrings freedom sings
All day everyday.

There are words like Liberty
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I know
You would know why.

Intrigued?

Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri and died in 1967. He was a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, song lyricist, author of juvenile books, columnist, essayist, and social activist. He also wrote two autobiographies.(1902-02-01)

His work is really intensely anthologized, and hundreds of poets have paid tribute to him in one way or another. For instance, a musical score to one of his poems in Carnegie Hall last month.

Find more of his work online at Poets.org and the Poetry Foundation.

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