In the following essay, Patterson examines the jazz poetics and the modernistic aspects of Hughes's verse.

In the following essay, Lowney discusses the emergence of bebop in the Harlem jazz scene and its relationship to the themes and rhythms of Hughes's Montage of a Dream Deferred.

In the following essay, Jarraway focuses critical attention on issues of subjectivity and identity in Hughes's Montage of a Dream Deferred.

In the following essay, Walkowitz explores Hughes's employment of poetry as a means of social and political discourse.

In the following essay, Ford examines simplicity of form and content in Hughes's poetry and short fiction.

In the following essay, Hokanson focuses on Hughes's Montage of a Dream Deferred to examine the influence of jazz on the structure and style of the poet's work.

In the following essay, Ford examines the various ways in which Hughes acted as a “relentless marketer” of his work throughout a four-decade career.

The following essay, which appeared in Ikonne's From DuBois to Van Vechten: The Early New Negro Literature 1903-1926 (1981), focuses on the aspect of self-expression and race identification in the works of Langston Hughes.

In the following essay, Chinitz credits Hughes with having invented blues poetry.

In the following essay, Rampersad argues that Hughes's use of the blues form in his poetry places him in the modernist tradition.

In the following essay, Borden examines how freely Hughes discussed gender and race relations in his works.

In the following essay, DeSantis reveals the ways racial injustice and violence influenced Hughes's writings in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the following essay, Hutchinson traces relationships between the works of Langston Hughes and nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman.

In the following essay, Rampersad argues that the Leftist critics failed Hughes.

In the following essay, Dandridge explores the portrayal of women as active civil rights freedom fighters in Simple Uncle Sam.

In the following essay, Tracy examines the influence of music—specifically the blues and gospel singing—on the poetry of Langston Hughes.

In the following essay, Tracy analyzes Hughes's use of the boogie-woogie form in five poems from Montage of a Dream Deferred.

In the following essay, Presley looks at the theme of the American dream in Hughes's poetry, drama, prose, and nonfiction.

In the following essay, Gill discusses correspondence that took place between Ezra Pound and Langston Hughes from 1931 to 1951.

In the following essay, Neal traces the major themes of Hughes's poetry.

In the following essay, Sundquist discusses the cultural influence of Langston Hughes as a result of his several decades of producing poetry, fiction, drama, autobiographical writings, and other works.

In the following essay, Dace offers an enthusiastic review of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.

In the following essay, Hernton examines the lesser-known “protest” poems of Langston Hughes.

In the following essay, Hubbard discusses Hughes's observations on the mulatto and the culture of race as depicted in the short story "Father and Son."

In the following essay, ya Salaam offers an analysis of Montage of a Dream Deferred to support his praise of Hughes as a prime innovator and creative force in the development of black poetry.

In the following essay, Mullen argues that Hughes's experiences in Mexico and Cuba had a significant influence on his writing and identity.

In the following excerpt, Hodges explores the issue of consistency in Hughes's writing, and critical reaction to his work.

In the following essay, Beavers argues that Hughes's role was to amplify the voice of African Americans.

In the following essay, Culp asserts that Hughes's poetry emphasizes the diverse role that religion plays in the African- American community.

In the following essay, the transcript of a lecture given by poet Alice Walker during the Langston Hughes Festival in 1989, Walker describes her relationship with Hughes.

Hughes's Ask Your Mama conforms in many respects to [a certain] concept of jazz poetry. Throughout the twelve sections of the volume there are elaborate notes calling for the reciprocal interplay of music and poetry. The dominant theme that in "the Quarter of the Negroes" life is full of waiting and hesitating is stressed musically by "The Hesitation Blues," an old blues number used as a recurring leitmotif throughout Ask Your Mama. Moreover, the ringing indictments of soc...

In his blues poetry Langston Hughes captures the mood, the feel, and the spirit of the blues; his poems have the rhythm and the impact of the musical form they incorporate. Indeed, the blues poems of Langston Hughes are blues as well as poetry…. [The] blues reflects the trials and tribulations of the Negro in America on a secular level, much as the spirituals do on the religious level. Both expressions are, certainly, necessary releases. In one of his "Blues for Men" poems in Shakespear...

In the following review of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Taylor states that the quality of the poems is uneven but the book gives a clear picture of Hughes.

The most outstanding feature in [The Weary Blues] was the use of Negro music as a model for a number of poems. The blues and jazz, the distinctive music of Negro life, provided the form for the title poem and several others. This stylistic experimentation was one of the major elements in Hughes's work. In this first volume the young poet also introduced the two major themes that would characterize his poetry throughout his long career. First, he expressed a deep commitment to the Negro masses…...

In his poem, "Children's Rhymes," Langston Hughes offers a brief but rewarding glimpse of Black children at play on city streets, complete with jingles that have been improvised out of the Black experience to replace more innocent ditties:                   What's written down         ...

Langston Hughes is generally acknowledged to be the major Afro-American poet of the twentieth century, yet the myth persists that despite his over nine hundred published poems he was more an entertainer than a serious poet…. Because so many of his early volumes are out-of-print and available only in rare book collections, the general public and many critics are unaware of the vast number of revisions Hughes has made over the years. These changes vary from minor alterations in punctuation to additions...

Jesse B. Semple is certainly no romantic hero, protest victim or militant leader, no charismatic character for the young to emulate…. Simple reached a wide, appreciative black audience because he appeared in newspapers readily available to black readers, and he reached white readers when Hughes began to publish the tales in book form. What is Simple's appeal? My contention is that the popularity of the tales is based on the narrative technique of the artist; that is, on the artistic devices us...

In the following review, Chambers discusses the appeal of Hughes's simple language and life experiences in three books for children.

In a difficult or disorganized structure, illustrating fused time, The Big Sea interweaves the themes of paradox and eternality. The Big Sea preserves a history of events less well than a history of persons…. Often giving historical fact, [Hughes] has his own loose and confusing way of presentation…. Actually the history of the work stretches from Hughes's birth in 1902 to the death of A'Lelia Walker in 1931 and the Scottsboro case of the same year….

If, as other critics suggest, [Simple, the protagonist of Hughes's The Best of Simple,] is the universal-black man in the street, the average and typical Afro-American, the cause of his (their) problems is not his lack of cultural awareness of his misdirected efforts to champion his négritude: "White folks is the cause of a lot of inconveniences in my life." White America has tried to give him a false sense of culture and to replace his black pride with a desire to be white. In b...

[The] image of home unifies Not Without Laughter. Hughes works within a long tradition, ranging from Homer to Baraka (Jones) in verse…. [The literature of this tradition attempts] to define home and man's relationship to it. This effort indicates a movement from innocence to experience. It implies alienation, happiness or despair. (p. 362) Not Without Laughter emphasized home and the three levels on which this image has meaning: the mythical, the historical, and the social….

The short fiction of Langston Hughes …—from The Ways of White Folks (1934) to Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952) or Something in Common and Other Stories (1963), and particularly the Simple pieces, Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes a Wife (1952), Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)—is in my opinion the best and most likely to endure body of work about Blacks—and Whites—by an American Black prior to the beginnings of the new, varied, and vigorous Black literature of the...