Harlem - Langston Hughes

This poem, especially at this moment, really hits home for me. Something about it just struck my soul, drew me in, and sliced my heart to pieces with the reality the words held. I’ve been through a lot like this lately, pushing dreams aside for something else, and reading these just sort of blew all of that into reality. I could name so many dreams I used to have, but… What do they do when you push them aside?

Harlem really left me thinking, and my mind is still trying to wrap around that idea, then the last line just… It was like a harsh slap back into reality. Every feeling that I’ve had in the past few years, every dream that I’ve lost, everything just sort of fell into place again, and I really had to sit down and think about it.

What happens to a dream deffered?

[D]oes it just explode?

Well, try and answer it. What do you guys think?  Because I still can’t, even after thinking about it and just staring at my textbook for nearly two hours, I’m still unsure. Langston Hughes has a way with words, one that I wish I could understand and possess myself. The similes thrown about help greatly with the imagery Hughes is providing, the images of the raisin in the sun, the festering sore, rotten meat… All of it pulls together a depressing image.

All I know for sure is that Harlem is a beautiful poem worded wonderfully and thoughtfully, leaving the mind open to many interpretations through the comparisons and contrasts of the rotten meat, the syrupy sweet, the final crushing blows of the heavy load and the line that ties it all together or does it just explode? All of it pulls together to work on a beautifully heart-wrenching piece of literature.

Thank you, Langston Hughes.