Excellent collection of a favorite poet.

Langston Hughes is often a collected poet, but I have never seen a collection as diverse as this.

Hughes entered the poetic scene of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, and continued to publish until his death in 1967. This volume collects not only his political work, or his "jazz" poetry work, or his doggerel, but all of his non-juvenile work, including two poems published posthumously.

Hughes is best know for his "What happens to a dream deferred?" poem, though my favorite of his has always been "Let America Be America Again." ("Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death / The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies / We, the people, must redeem / The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. / The mountains and the endless plain - / All, all the stretch of these great green states - / And make America again!") In general, there are certain themes to Hughes' work that inform each of his poems:

First, there is his politics. Hughes began writing at a time when the Great Depression led many towards socialism, though later in his life, like most American liberals who had turned towards socialism in those dire times, he became disillusioned by the abuses of the people he saw in Russia. Hughes especially felt the sting of the Depression in the African-American community, which suffered almost more than any other. Even during the hyperpatriotic days of World War II, Hughes kept up the sting of pointing out America's inequality.

Second, there is his "jazz" rhythm. Hughes is also the author of the 1955 "First Book of Jazz", which I recommend to parents everywhere if they can find it for their children. (Some poems for children are included in this collection.) Throughout Hughes' work there is a conscious, but only rarely self-conscious adoption of jazz and blues rhythms, making them very different from European-style poetry and free verse. If you want to point to a poem and say "this is an African-American poem", Hughes is probably the place to start, because in him the African-American rhythm is most undiluted.

This book provides an excellent, affordable one-volume collection of one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. If all of it is not to your taste, it is because Hughes' work itself is extremely varied. Tight and unobtrusive scholarship holds the collection together, and it is well-indexed.