Langston Hughes - The Most Influential African-American Poet In History

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902 but was raised mainly by his grandmother, Mary Langston, following his parents separated. While not living with his grandmother, he traveled with his mother from town to town and lived in such locations as Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana and New York. He also lived component of the time with his grandmother, Mary Langston.

Whilst living in Cleveland, Ohio in his early teenage years, Langston Hughes found the poetry of Carl Sandburg, who would turn out to be an influence. He was also influenced by Walt Whitman, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Claude McKay. He so grew in stature as a poet that his eighth grade class elected him as the class poet.

He moved to Mexico following higher college and wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," one of his most well-known poems, in 1921. He then enrolled in Columbia University, but quickly abandoned his research in lieu of jazz and blues in Harlem. This was While he earned his reputation as a respected and gifted young African-American poet.

In 1926 Langston Hughes published his initial book of poetry, The Weary Blues.

In the early 1930's, Hughes traveled to the Soviet Union, Japan and Haiti. Throughout this trip he had an affair with an Oriental ballerina and penned "Goodbye, Christ," a poem that would draw the ire of a Christian fundamentalist group in the 1940's. Right after numerous travels he returned to Harlem to make it his house.

Langston Hughes became an influential and controversial figure and wrote around race relations frequently, occasionally extremely provocatively. In 1942 he began a newspaper column featuring a fictional character by the name of Jesse B. Semple. It ran for 20 years.

He wrote one of his most well-known poems, "Harlem", in 1951, about the time that his communist leanings would draw interest from the mainstream press and political personalities. Ten years later he published "Black Nativity" which sparked controversy. To this day, nevertheless, numerous African-American churches put a overall performance of this play on in their churches. He died in 1967. Several individuals refer to Langston Hughes as the black poet laureate due to his influence on African-American literature and especially the Harlem Renaissance.

Allen Taylor has been writing poetry for 20 years and has been published in a selection of journals on-line and in print. He is the webmaster of Globe Class Poetry at www.Globe-class-poetry.com and writes the every day weblog at www.worldclasspoetryblog.com [http://www.worldclasspoetryblog.com]. For much more info on Langston Hughes and other well-known poets, go to the Globe Class Poetry Hall of Fame.