The poet I am going to write about is Langston Hughes. The reason I chose him is because at that time, there was racism in the United States of America, and he could use his poets to bring out the problem of racism to the Americans.
Throughout his career, Hughes encountered mixed reactions to his work. Many black intellectuals denounced him for portraying unsophisticated aspects of lower-class life, claiming that his focus furthered the unfavorable image of African Americans. However, other critics have noted the uneven quality of his writing. Critics agree that Hughes is at his best when he depicts the everyday experiences of African Americans and that these depictions are often their best in his most simple and direct poetry.
Later in life, Hughes was criticized for failing to address controversial issues and to reflect the more militant fight for civil rights. However, later critics note that Hughes remained constant in his focus on the problems of racism and the failure of African Americans to realize the American Dream. Basically, throughout his career, he had been writing about the problem of racism and there were people who agreed and disagreed with him, but he didn’t give up but continued.
I have read some of his works and I think it really shows the crux of this racism problem that arises in America. At the same time, he also wrote some poets to encourage people to live on, like “Life is Fine”, where it tells how good life is. After I have researched and slightly understood about Langston Hughes, I think that he is patriotic but at the same time, hoped that America would change to a multi-racial country. All in all, I think that Langston Hughes’s poets are good.
Langston Hughes was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston (brother of John Mercer Langston, the first Black American to be elected to public office). He attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, where he began writing poetry in the eighth grade. Although his father once discouraged him from writing and sent him to study engineering, but because he liked writing so much, he dropped out of the degree course and continued to write poetry. His first published poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, was also one of his most famous, appearing in Brownie's Book. Two other examples of his poets are “I, too, sing America” and “Let America be America again”, where he writes that the present America is not what he wants.
Sources: http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/langston_hughes http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/hughes-langston