The Poetry of Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was born at the turn of the century in America. Hughes spent a rootless childhood moving from place to place with his mother who was separated from his father. During one year of high school, Hughes spent time with his father in Mexico, a light-skinned man who found an escape from racism on ranching. With his father's help, Hughes attended Columbia University, but soon became disgusted with college life and immersed himself in his first love: poetry, jazz and blues in Harlem. Hughes supported himself with odd jobs as a nightclub doorman and steward as he traveled to far-flung places such as West Africa, Italy and Paris. During this time Hughes wrote poems that earned him a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. His first book of verse was published in 1926. In this work, the rhythmic and lyrical nature of his poetry is evident, as is his belief that only by remaining connected to their African roots could African Americans find understanding. We see this in Cross: "My old man died in a nice big house / My mother died in a shack. / I wonder where I'll die, / Being neither black nor white?" (Langston 2). Langston Hughes' poems share a relationship in that they most typically describe the African American experience in the midst of an oppressive white mainstream culture. Some poems are strident political protests or social critiques, while others describe life in Harlem to include poverty, prejudice, hunger, desperation, and other themes. Hughes tried to maintain an artistic detachment despite his deep emotions regarding the feelings expressed in his poems. He attempted, albeit unsuccessfully in some poems, to represent the universal while also specifically using African American issues, themes, and discourses. We see it in color: “Wear it / Like a banner / For the proud – / Not like a shroud” (Langston 2). We can see in this poem that Hughes' work describes the universal experience of being ostracized or oppressed for what one cannot change, but we also see that he directly targets the experience of Black people with such conditions. Hughes's poems often have a musical rhythm. , as its lyrics typically rhyme in the pattern ABAB CDCD ABAB CDCD. Harlem music, black slave spirituals and other influences such as Walt Whitman and W.