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Featured Author: Langston Hughes
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Featured Author: Langston Hughes
With News and Reviews From the Archives of The New York Times
In This FeatureReviews of Langston Hughes’s Earlier Books Articles About and by Langston Hughes Audio
Langston Hughes Reads From His Poetry Recent Links
David Levering Lewis Reviews ‘Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964’ (April 22, 2001) First Chapter: ‘Remember Me to Harlem’
Photo by Carl Van Vechten. From “Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964.” Copyright Alfred A. Knopf/Emily Bernard.Langston Hughes in 1938.
AUDIO:
From the Caedmon audio tape “Langston Hughes Reads From His Poetry.”
Click here to listen to the entire reading (6 minutes).
Click below to listen to selections from the reading.One Way Ticket
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Trumpet Player
Ballad of the Gypsy
Kid Sleepy
Puzzled
Southern Mammy Songs
Copyright 1980 HarperCollins Publishers Inc./ 1962 BBC Enterprises, Ltd.
This feature requires Real Player.
Previous Audio Readings From The New York Times on the Web‘Not Without Laughter‘
(1930)
“. . . very slow, even tedious, reading in its early chapters, but once it gains its momentum it moves as swiftly as a jazz rhythm. Its characters, emerging ever more clearly . . . as the novel proceeds
[are a] living challenge to our civilization, a challenge that is all the more effective because it springs naturally out of its materials and is not superimposed upon them.”‘Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti‘
(1932)
“Here is a travel book that is a model of its kind. . . . One follows their adventures, the simple everyday happenings, with interest. . . . tempts us to wish that all our travel books for children might
be written by poets.”‘The Dream Keeper and Other Poems‘
(1932)
“A book that will be a welcome addition to the shelves of school and public libraries and to the personal libraries of older boys and girls.”‘The Impact of Races‘
(1934)
“Hughes is a talented writer; he is also a Negro; and it is difficult to decide which comes first. As an artist, it may be a limitation that he concerns himself entirely with the interrelations of the black
and white peoples.”‘The Big Sea‘
(1940)
“Hughes’s autobiography is the product and portrait of a very unusual spirit . . . [I]ts profound quality and lasting worth are to be found in the fact that . . . it remains both sensitive and poised,
candid and reticent, realistic and unembittered.”‘Shakespeare in Harlem‘
(1942)
“Hughes’s range is very bounded, and consequently many of his poems are monotonous. He has strong emotions; he has a form and vocabulary of his own . . . but neither his imagination nor his intelligence
comes anywhere near the strength of his emotions.”‘Fields of Wonder‘
(1947)
“For all its variety of subject matter, the collection seems monotonous in treatment. In spite of a certain individuality in Mr. Hughes’ approach, there are such strong echoes of other poets . . . His
poems have their own qualities of delicate lyricism and honesty of vision . . .”‘One Way Ticket‘
(1949)
“Hughes returns to the kind of poetry that made him famous twenty years ago — songs that express the intricate, paradoxical soul of the Negro. . . . Yet a rather intangible change in feeling and form makes
these poems slightly different. . . . It is as if the poet, suspecting softness in his early work, were pushing toward an even more direct and forceful method.”‘Simple Speaks His Mind‘
(1950)
“Outwardly the book is a collection of entertaining Harlem conversations. Inwardly it is better than a dozen vast and weighty and piously pompous studies in race relations.”‘Montage of a Dream Deferred‘
(1951)
“Langston Hughes can write pages that throb with the abrupt rhythms of popular music. He can draw thumbnail sketches of Harlem lives and deaths that etch themselves harshly in the memory. Yet the book as
a whole leaves one less responsive to the poet’s achievement than conscious of the limitations of folk art.”‘Laughing to Keep from Crying‘
(1952)
“Few writers have worn so well over the years . . . ‘Laughing to Keep from Crying,’ which contains pieces dating from as far back as the Twenties, is a short book, but it is a highly successful
one.”‘Simple Takes a Wife,’ reviewed by Carl Van Vechten
(1953)
“Langston Hughes laughs with, cries with, and speaks for, the Negro (in all classes) more understandingly, perhaps, than any other writer. Harlem is his own habitat, his workshop and his playground, his
forte and his dish of tea. . . . ‘Simple Takes a Wife’ . . . is more brilliant, more skillfully written, funnier, and perhaps just a shade more tragic than its predecessor. “‘Simple Stakes a Claim‘
(1957)
“Like its predecessors, ‘Simple Stakes a Claim’ is funny and sharp and indignant and tolerant, even of whites; and full of veiled warnings and demonstrations of the stupidities, callousness and
cruelties of both whites and Negroes . . .”‘Tambourines to Glory‘
(1958)
“As a literary work, ‘Tambourines to Glory,’ is skillful and engaging — the consistently high quality of Hughes’ production over the years is, considering its great quantity, a remarkable
phenomenon and the mark of an exuberant professionalism. Yet in the end, the book is a minor effort, a side glance at a major phenomenon, with an industriously contrived climax.”‘Selected Poems of Langston Hughes,’ reviewed by James Baldwin
(1959)
“Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts–and depressed that he has done so little with them. . . . this book contains a great deal which a more disciplined poet
would have thrown into the waste-basket . . . He is not the first American Negro to find the war between his social and artistic responsibilities all but irreconcilable.”‘An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans,’ selected by Langston Hughes
(1960)
“[Hughes] has assembled a collection of short pieces, in prose and verse, which lets us sample this new writing more fully. The thirty-five writers have in common an intense pride of race; their situations
vary, as do their talents. Collectively, their work has a freshness that bespeaks the wind of change blowing over the once-dark continent.”‘Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz‘
(1961)
“Langston Hughes’ twelve jazz pieces cannot be evaluated by any canon dealing with literary right or wrong. They are non-literary — oral, vocal, compositions to be spoken, or shouted, to the accompaniment
of drum and flute and bass.”‘Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP‘
(1962)
“Hughes, the prolific Missouri-born Negro poet and playwright, now 60, tells the story plainly but with complete endorsement. . . . Scholars might prefer more identification of some of his source material.”‘Poems From Black Africa,’ edited by Langston Hughes
(1963)
“Hughes’s volume, significant as the first major collection of its kind, represents 38 African poets from 11 countries, ranging in attitude and poetic form from personal lyricism to nationalistic protest
. . .”‘Simple’s Uncle Sam‘
(1965)
“Hughes’s Simple has delighted one generation and is delighting another.”‘The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes‘
(1994)
“His blues poems are part of the American canon. So are the jazz-permeated suites of the 1950’s and 60’s . . . There is doggerel in this book, too . . . And so, read the rest, then reread the best.”‘Short Stories of Langston Hughes‘
(1996)
“Some of the stories are memorable and moving. . . . But somehow these collections failed to establish Hughes as one of the great American short-story writers of his generation . . .”Democracy Here Is Held Flexible
(1947)
Hughes addressed the opening session of the three-day conference of the American Education Fellowship.Halasz Presents New Still Opera
(1949)
“There are a good many clichés of Broadway and Hollywood in the score of William Grant Still’s opera ‘The Troubled Island,’ after the libretto of Langston Hughes . . . At the same time,
as the piece goes on, there is evident in it an operatic talent . . .”Theatre: ‘Shakespeare in Harlem’
(1960)
“Langston Hughes begins to cast a long shadow. . . . From an academic point of view, it is hardly a play. But the delicacy of feeling it discloses, the idiomatic music of the lines and the immaculate taste
of the performance endow it with thoughtful beauty.”Jack-of-Trades
(1960)
In a profile, Hughes explained his busy schedule: “I’m trying to conduct a major career on a minor income. To keep above water, I wrote two other books while doing the African anthology, and went on
two transcontinental lecture tours.”Nine Are Elected to Art Institute
(1961)
Hughes was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in the company of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Hughes’s friend, Carl Van Vechten.Opera ‘Esther’ Sung at Hunter
(1961)
“[The] biblical opera in three acts with music by Jan Meyerowitz and libretto by Langston Hughes . . . was not very enlightening . . . The feebleness of the stage drama made the music seem decidedly overblown.”
Theatre: ‘Black Nativity’
(1961)
“There is a lot of song but hardly any play in Langston Hughes’ Christmas song play, ‘Black Nativity’ . . .”Silent One, by Langston Hughes
(1962)
The Times reprinted a Hughes poem.Foes Seek to Bar Negro Poet’s Play
(1963)
Letters, usually including an unsigned mimeographed article attacking Hughes as a “Communist sympathizer,” were received by the Roman Catholic archdiocesan chancery office and the Catholic Adult Education
Center.TV: The ‘Black Nativity’
(1963)
“The television production of ‘Black Nativity,’ the telling of the Christmas story in gospel music, dance and the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . was an unusual and different program.”Theater: A Rousing ‘Jericho-Jim Crow’
(1964)
“This rousing production is an unabashedly sentimental and tuneful history of the Negro struggle up from slavery.”Little Dreams, by Langston Hughes
(1964)
The Times reprinted a Hughes poem.Theater: ‘The Exception and the Rule’
(1965)
“Place the didactic simplicities of Bertold Brecht side by side with the jubilant simplicities of Langston Hughes and you get an uncommonly rewarding evening.”Langston Hughes, Writer, 65, Dead
(1967)
Hughes’s obituary calls him the “O. Henry of Harlem.”Milton Meltzer’s ‘Langston Hughes’: The Darker Brother
(1968)
“[An] able and readable biography, written for the 12-and-older crowd . . .”Langston Hughes — The Most Abused Poet in America?
(1969)
Reflecting on a recording of readings of Hughes’s work, Lindsay Patterson wrote, “Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations.”Recordings; Langston Hughes: Humor, Passion
(1970)
“This album helps us keep Langston Hughes with us . . . His view of our pained landscape is still very, very worth noting.”Child’s Tale About Race Has a Tale of Its Own
(1997)
“The Pasteboard Bandit” lay unnoticed for 57 years, until 1992, when Nancy Toff, an editor at Oxford University Press, saw a reference to Hughes’s unpublished children’s stories in Arnold
Rampersad’s “Life of Langston Hughes.”Previous Author Features From The New York Times on the Web
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