The Poems: 1941-1950

By Langston Hughes and Cleo Qian

Book Overview

Volume 2 includes the books Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), Fields of Wonder (1947), and One-Way Ticket (1949). Starting around 1940, Hughes turned away from radical socialism toward strong support for the national war effort; as a poet, he resumed his experimentation in the blues, as Shakespeare in Harlem brilliantly demonstrates. With this change in political emphasis came a renewed commitment to the achievement of civil rights for blacks, which Jim Crow's Last Stand vigorously asserts. In contrast, Fields of Wonder was Hughes's only book devoted almost entirely to lyric verse; but the next volume, One-Way Ticket, restored the balance that was essential to his creative expression as a poet.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826213405
• ISBN13: 9780826213402
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 to 10 years
• Grade Range: Postsecondary to Grade 5

Customer Reviews

cultural insight

Excellent view of an emerging modernist culture in a time when little has been shared generally with the mainstream American history instruction in schools. Uplifting and provocative in a positive way. For a whitebread middleclass American, I found this refreshing when compared to the mudslinging of the divisionist politics currently going on in the Presidential election. Each culture has unique views and gifts to share, this was an enlightening view of the Black Culture I had not seen before. Rapping and Krumping glorify the street, these writings glorify the inner soul. I am ordering Volume 2