Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

Born in 1902, Hughes instantly had two dreams to go to college and become a writer. And although he might be well known for his expressive poems, his real interest was in theater. According to Brenda Murphy from Bloom’s Literature, “He wrote more than 60 plays, 23 in collaboration with others and 40 as sole author” (Murphy). It’s very amazing to know that his real passion is for theater, but he is well known for his poems. Langston Hughes spent most of his days studying English and writing, until eventually he submitted some of his poems and plays into a magazine called Brownies’ Books. But this wasn’t enough for Hughes, he wanted more for himself and on June of 1921, “"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis” according to Cindy Dyson’s article …show more content…
Even when Langston Hughes was in grade school he can remember people always enjoying his poetry. According to Cindy Bloom’s article “Hughes, Langston” Hughes remembers the first time he realized that he liked poetry is when he presented a poem for his class. "And in the latter half, I said our class was the greatest class ever graduated. Naturally everybody applauded loudly. That was the way I began to write poetry” (qtd in “Hughes, Langston). And as Hughes gets older and expands his education at Columbia he decided that school wasn’t for him and he rather travel the world. When he returned from traveling the world Hughes immediately returned to his writings. Even though Hughes was used to people of Harlem liking his work, there was one person in specific who did not. In “Hughes, Langston” from Bloom’s Literature states Baldwin’s review about Hughes work, “Every time I read Langston Hughes, I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts—and depressed that he had done so little with them. . . . [His] poems which take refuge, finally, in a fake simplicity in order to avoid the very difficult simplicity of experience.”(qtd in “Hughes,