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Slideshow: James Mercer Langston Hughes' Harlem Home

Slideshow: James Mercer Langston Hughes’ Harlem Home

240px LangstonHughes 205x300 Slideshow: James Mercer Langston Hughes Harlem Home
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet and creator of jazz poerty. First published in The Crisis in 1921, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, became Hughes’s signature poem (below).

The slideshow below is of pictures of his home in Harlem located at 20 East 127th Street. The home has 5 bedrooms and four bathrooms and you can see pictures of the interior here.

“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.
20 200x300 Slideshow: James Mercer Langston Hughes Harlem Home

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.

from “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1920), in The Weary Blues (1926)

Learn more about Langston Hughes from Wikipedia.

Visit Alberto’s Tumblr for more NYC photos: http://allleft.tumblr.com and follow him on Twitter @AlbertoReyesNYC

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