pickIt‘s a credit to the wild and eventful life Langston Hughes had lived, for the poet to be asked to already write an autobiography, still in his thirties. Hughes tells of his early life as a curious young man, taking up work as a seaman on merchant ships to Africa, Havana and Europe, working as a waiter in the Black concert halls of Paris and finding his poetic voice, mingling with the literati and other cultural icons of the Harlem Renaissance.
"That is one of the many wonders of the sea - that the garbage and bilge water of ten thousand ships is dumped into it every day, and the sea is never dirty." Oh 1940, if only you knew...
Time to dust off the old hashtag because today is the first #PoetryWednesday of the school year! This is the 4th grade poem paired with the Hughes story "Thank You, M'am".
Apparently (James) Langston Hughes' parents divorced when the poet was quite young. On this passport application, 18-year-old Hughes requests to spend the summer with his father who had moved to Mexico. The bad photo scan takes poetic license and depicts him half in shadow and half in light.
#WritersOnVacation
I went to a kids' consignment sale today that had a section for grown-up books. And since today was 50% off day, I got all of the above for $1.50 total. I showed admirable restraint, all things considered. Now to clean up the weekend's kid art detritus, in the background...
#PoetryWednesday just for my 4th graders today. Schedules get weird before breaks so I chose something direct and to-the-point.
In class we looked at the prose, poetry, music, dance, and fashion of the Harlem Renaissance. This story tied in nicely with the theme of #empathy that I'm focusing all the literature in this unit around. #riotgrams #blackhistory
This postcard 😍😍!
Wonderful quote from one of my all-time favorite poets, Langston Hughes. Samesies. #birthday #quote #poetry #blackhistory
The Big Sea: An Autobiography | 
