Langston Hughes was born in Missouri in 1902 and led a varied life. He studied at Columbia University in New York and later at Lincoln University in Nebraska before working as a seaman, a newspaper correspondent, a cook, and a busboy. While working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, Hughes placed three of his poems beside the plate of a dinner guest. The guest, noted poet Vachel Lindsay, recognized Hughes’s talent and helped him get his poems published. The jazz and blues that Hughes heard in Harlem strongly influenced his poetry. Hughes tried to write poems that resembled spoken language and would be readily understandable to readers who had little experience with poetry. He said that “poetry should be direct, comprehensible, and the epitome [classic example] of simplicity.”
