<p><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/langston-hughes">Langston Hughes</a> was a leading poet in the Harlem Renaissance and a pioneer in the form of jazz poetry. While working as a hotel busboy in Washington, D.C. in the early 1920s, he was “discovered” by fellow poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped publicize his work. In 1926 he published his first poetry collection, <i>The Weary Blues</i>, which opens with one of his best-known poems, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Themes he explores in his poetry include the lives of the Black working class, jazz and blues music, and race consciousness.</p> <p>This Standard Ebooks edition compiles all of the publicly-accessible poems by Langston Hughes known to be in the U.S. public domain, which is limited to about the first decade of his work.</p>