My Favourite Poet

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was a great American writer. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes stressed the importance of a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate that united people of African descent and Africa across the globe and encouraged pride in their own diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic.
Hughes had a very poor relationship with his father. Hughes lived with his father in Mexico for a brief period in 1919. The relationship between the two was strained and unhappy, causing Langston to attempt suicide multiple times.
Langston Hughes was a great man that wanted to change America for the greater good. His poems emphasised how the African Americans were treated unequally. He had a goal to bring back the old America. From “Let America Be America Again”, we realise that he was passionate about America, how he wants America to revive the American Dream. His ultimate
goal was for every race to be equal, and that the Africans Americans will be treated equally with the other races.
Langston Hughes was a very straightforward man who spoke his mind when needed to. He could express himself, his life very clearly onto his poems. He did not regard other people’s views towards him. He wanted to speak blatantly.
Langston Hughes’s poems always had a meaning behind a poem; he always had a reason for writing it. His poems went beyond just plain writing; he wrote poems to show his opinion towards a particular subject.
On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer leading to the auditorium named for him within the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The design on the floor covering his cremated remains is an African cosmogram titled Rivers. The title is taken from the poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Hughes. Within the center of the cosmogram and precisely above the ashes of Hughes are the words My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes was a brave and great man that influenced others to follow his footsteps. His contributions to poetry would never be forgotten.