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Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems

This little book with poems of Langston Hughes was published in 1944, the editor - Hendrik Driessen - and the publisher of this rather limited edition are not named. This book however was a private edition of Jan van Krimpen. It was an illigal edition in war time in Holland. The type was set on the Linotype in Bodoni by the firm N.V. Koot en Hinnen in Amsterdam and printed by J.C.A. Meischke in Amsterdam.

Introduction

 * By way of Introduction
 * Some of the most characteristic expressions of American art are Negro or Negroid, derivatives of the Negro folk life; and America basks in their influence, thrives upon their consumption and vulgarization. This because these expressions have an almost irresistible hold upon the human soul - since. being soundly primitive, they are basically and universally human.
 * Slavery put upon the Negro conditions which as economic and civic handicaps and as race prejudice still hamper. On the other hand this prejudice preserved the peculiar Negro folk-values and intensified their modes of expression.
 * Against this background we have to see the work of the younger American Negro poets. The new negro poetry is the expression of a new racial consciousness and self-conception. It is a frank acceptance of the race without the wearying appeals to pity, and the conscious philosophy of defence. Nevertheless it still has an undernote of melancholy, the melancholy of a tormented people.
 * Most of these younger Negro poets use in many of their poems the form of the old folk-ballads, the spirituals and the blues.

The Dark

 * Lament for dark peoples ( I was a red man one time)
 * The Negro (I am a Negro: Black as the night is black)
 * The Negro speaks of rivers (I've known rivers)
 * Suicide's note (The calm, cool face of the river)
 * Poem (I loved my friend)
 * Poem (We have to-morrow bright for us)
 * Epilogue (I, too, sing America)

Love

 * Cross (My old man's a white old man)
 * Song for a dark girl (Way down south in Dizie)
 * The white ones (I do not hate you)
 * A black Pierrot (I'm a black Pierrot)
 * Aunt Sue's stories (Aunt Sue has a head full of stories)
 * Troubled woman (She stands, in the quite darkness,)
 * When Sue wears red (When Susanna Jones wears red)
 * Dressed up (I had my clothes cleaned)
 * Reasons why (Just because I loved you)

Blues

 * Po' Boy Blues (When I was home de Sunshine seemed like gold.)
 * Night and Morn (Sun's a settin', This is what I'm gonna sing)
 * Homesick blues (De railroad bridge's A sad song in the air,)
 * The weary blues (Droning a drowsy syncopated tune)
 * To midnight Nan at Leroy's (Strut and wiggle, shameless gal,
 * Song for an Banjo Dance (Shake your brown feet, honey)
 * Blues Fantasy (Hey! Hey! That's what the Blues singers say,)

Interlade

 * Dream variation (To fling my arms wide, In some place of the sun)
 * Winter moon (How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!)
 * Sea Calm (How still, how strangely still)

Spirituals

 * Feet o' Jesus (At de feet o'Jesus)
 * Judgment Day (They put ma body in de ground,)
 * Prayer (I ask you this: Which way to go?)

Biography & Bibliography
Langston Huges was born in Joplin, Missioury on February 1, 1902. He studied ad Colombia University for a year. In 1923 and 1924 he traffeled as a member of the crew of freight stteamers and visited Africa, England, Francs, Holland, Spain and Italy. After his wanderings he studied at the Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, and was a cleck at the office of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Excapt for his books, he published works in many periodicals.
 * Weary Blues (Poems) 1926
 * Fine Clothes of the Jew (poems) 1937
 * Not without laugther (1930)
 * Negro Mother (1931)
 * Dream Keeper and other Pomes (1931)
 * Southboro Limited (1932)
 * Big sea; An Autobiography (1940)
 * Popo And Fifina, children of Haïti (with Arna Bontemps) (1932)

Colophon
Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems by Lanston Hughes were selected and introduced by an amateur. This edition was printed in Linotype-Bodoni and consists of 250 copies. Apart from these 50 copies have been printed on special paper, numbered from 1-50.

=References=

Category:African-American literature Category:Jazz poetry Category:1925 poems Category:African-American poetry Category:Poetry by Langston Hughes Category:American poems