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v. 1 ISBN 9780826213396
内容説明
The first three volumes of Missouri's landmark Collected Works of Langston Hughes comprise all of his published poetry. Although he worked in a variety of forms, Hughes was above all a poet. From 1921, when his first poem. ""The Negro Speaks of Rivers,"" appeared in a national magazine, until 1967, when his last volume appeared shortly after his death, he remained faithful to his central goal - to be a poet of the African American and American experience, creating verse that honored the culture of black American and the ideals of the nation. Volume 1 includes the complete texts of Hughes's first book, The Weary Blues (1926), and his second, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), as well as other poems published by him during and after the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues announced the arrival of a rare voice in American poetry. A literary descendant of Walt Whitman (""I, too, sing America,"" Hughes wrote), he chanted the joys and sorrows of black America in unprecedented language. A gifted lyricist, he offered rhythms and cadences that epitomized the particularities of African American creativity, especially jazz and the blues. His second volume, steephed in the blues and controversial because of its frankness, confirmed Hughes as a poet of uncompromising integrity. Then, in the 1930s especially, came the radical poetry included in Dear Lovely Death (1934) and A New Song (1938). For example, ""Good Morning Revolution"" and ""Let American Be America Again"" made his pen one of the most forceful in America during the Great Depression.
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v. 2 ISBN 9780826213402
内容説明
Volume 2 includes the books Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), Fields of Wonder (1947), and One-Way Ticket (1948). 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 briliantly 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 entirely to lyric verse; but the next volume, One-Way Ticket, restored the balance that was essential to his creative expression as a poet.
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v. 3 ISBN 9780826213419
内容説明
Volume 3 collects the poems of the last period of Hughes's life. Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) brilliantly fused the modernist dissonances of bebop jazz with his perception of Harlem life as both a triumph of hope and a potential crisis (""What happens to a dream deferred?""). In the tumultuous following years, he refused to relinquish the mantle of the poet, as may be seen in his inspired last two books of verse, Ask Your Mama (1961) and The Panther and the Lash (1967). The former demonstrate Hughes's continuing alertness to the significance of black music as a guide to American reality, here, avant-garde jazz rhythms and allusions fueled an intensity of language that predicted the cultural upheavals of the sixties and seventies. Hughes's last volume, combining old and new poems, emphasized the struggle for civil rights in the face of reactionary defiance, on the one hand, and the volatility of Black Power, on the other. Vigorous and versatile to the end, Hughes concluded his career as he had begun it a master poet dedicated to observing and celebrating African American culture in its full complexity.
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