I started reading through the collections of Langston Hughes poems at night. At the start I didn't know that the loneliness of the night is matched in his poems.

The book "Selected Poems of Langston Hughes" is a collection of poems which were chosen by Langston Hughes himself. The Collection of Poetry is divided into 13 chapters. Each chapter is about a special topic.

The first chapter is about African Americans. The poems in this chapter are mostly about slavery, poor working conditions, and dreams of being free and enjoying life. I think Mr. Highes chose this topic for the first chapter because it is an underlying and ongoing issue for all African Americans in America. Period.

The second chapter is about Jesus and praying. The topic of the second chapter is purposeful, answering affirmatively to the first chapter - with the hope that many African Americans and many other people find through religion.

Yet in the chimera of hope, Langston Hughes’s poems are melancholic and sad.

He writes about people, mostly black people, working and living in adverse conditions.

His love poems are about heartbreak, loneliness or lovesickness, but ultimately about love.

Almost every poem also includes a spontaneous wish for hope, the hope that shines in all of us, that hope that everything is going to be better. Someday.

—- Klara Lobmayr

Langston Hughes and the Radiance of Poetry