My Favourite Poet

James Mercer Langston Hughes is a well-known and well-respected person in America. He was born on the February 1, 1902. And died on the 22nd of May 1967was an established American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and columnist. 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
“I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much.” This was one of the phrases he said during his childhood. He had a bad father who mistreated and did not understand him. This caused him to try and suicide many times. His father also tried to plan his life by asking him to attend university and studying engineering but instead, he did six different odd jobs and after that went to abroad to study in Lincoln University, a renowned school for blacks.
I feel that he has a very strong will to pursue his own interest in poems and not be influenced by others to study other stuff. His determination is also admired by me. He “survived” through his childhood, enduring all the torture.
These are some poems which I adore:
1) I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
Flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I danced in the Nile when I was old
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
Went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
Bosom turns all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

2) The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
Our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.
If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people
Are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure
Doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,
strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain
Free within ourselves.

3) The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Adapted from Wikipedia