Langston Hughes: Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes studied engineering at Columbia University because his father didn't think he could earn a living as a writer, but he never stopped writing. In addition to his poetry, he wrote plays, essays and novels as well as operas and musicals. He also edited a number of anthologies.

Hughes reads one of the poems for which his is most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln 
     went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy 
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.