One of my favorite poets is Langston Hughes. His childhood years were unstable because his father, a lawyer, left the family and moved to Mexico because of racism in the U. S. Raised by his grandmother, he was taught a sense of racial pride as she told him stories about his African ancestors. He was elected class poet in grammar school since he "had a sense of rhythm."
(More racism!) He later lived with his father in Mexico trying to persuade him to support Langston at Columbia in his desire to be a writer. His father said he would pay for an engineering degree, so Hughes went to Columbia studying engineering. He dropped out because of the racial prejudice at the university, but later got a degree at Lincoln University. After dropping out of Columbia, Hughes moved to Harlem where he came of age as a poet in the Harlem Renaissance.
His book The Dream Keeper and Other Poems was published for children in 1994 with wonderful pen and ink drawings by Brian Pinkney. Here are some "dreamer" selections:
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
The Dream Keeper
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
of the world.
His poem "Dream Variation" contains the much used phrase, "black like me."
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