Quotes & Sayings About Langston Hughes Poetry

Poetry is the human soul entire
Squeezed like a lemon or a lime,
Drop by drop into atomic words". — Langston Hughes

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a -

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a -

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!
Dream Boogie

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h! — Langston Hughes

I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class, and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everybody knows - except us - that all Negroes have rhythms, so they elected me class poet. — Langston Hughes

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true. — Langston Hughes

When Hughes writes, in the first two lines of his poem, "Let America be America again/ Let it be the dream it used to be," he acknowledges that America is primarily a dream, a hope, an aspiration, that may never be fully attainable, but that spurs us to be better, to be larger. He follows this with the repeated counterpoint, "America never was America to me," and through the rest of this remarkable poem he alternates between the oppressed and the wronged of America, and the great dreams that they have for their country, that can never be extinguished. — Harry Belafonte

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing ... not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer. — Langston Hughes

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to do work well and in a healthy way without using my work as a way to define myself. Jesus says his load is easy and his burden is light, but he doesn't say there isn't a load or a burden. He recognizes there is something to carry but he invites us into the easy way of carrying it. — Emily P. Freeman

Cheap little rhymes
A cheap little tune
Are sometimes as dangerous
As a sliver of the moon. — Langston Hughes

THEY WERE PEOPLE who went in for Negroes - Michael and Anne - the Carraways. But not in the social-service, philanthropic sort of way, no. They saw no use in helping a race that was already too charming and naive and lovely for words. Leave them unspoiled and just enjoy them, Michael and Anne felt. So they went in for the Art of Negroes - the dancing that had such jungle life about it, the songs that were so simple and fervent, the poetry that was so direct, so real. They never tried to influence that art, they only bought it and raved over it, and copied it. For they were artists, too. — Langston Hughes

Out of love,
No regrets
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.
Out of love,
No regrets
Though the return
Be never. — Langston Hughes

The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world. — Langston Hughes

The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water. — Langston Hughes

I asked Shia: who is the guy that terrifies you the most? And he said Mads. So it was somebody we both really wanted to work with. He's intimidating, but has a really big heart and he's sexy. He's got this sexiness, even guys fall for him. He just penetrates everything-not literally. So we needed a brokenhearted thug that could really give us the heartache. And going between the violence and viciousness and the complete softness without making it too much. A lot of those characters can go into a charade, and I needed it to be genuine heartbrokenness and that's what he's great at doing. — Fredrik Bond

What happens to a dream deferred? — Langston Hughes

Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection. — Langston Hughes

Her violet-rimmed-grey eyes began to plead when she realized she had my full attention. "I want to see some lights, food, men! Let's get crazy enough to get arrested, but be so cute that they won't want to arrest us! These boobs don't look like this without HELP and effort, chicky! Do you know how long it took me to get ready? Let's DO something, and have fun while we are here, Lexi! Don't waste all of my primping time! Puh-leaseeeeee?? — C.L. Foster

One often hears of a horse that shivers with terror, or a dog that howls at something a man's eyes cannot see, and men who live primitive lives where instinct does the work of reason are fully conscious of many things that we cannot perceive at all. As life becomes more orderly, more deliberate, the supernatural world sinks farther away. — W.B.Yeats

And because this is now a political problem, the usual political syllogism applies: (a) is a problem: Something Must Be Done, (b) is Something, Therefore (b) Must Be Done. — Charles Stross

LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words. — Langston Hughes

if you're going to use the word 'dream' in a poem, you had better be langston hughes. — Jewelle L. Gomez