Poems by Langston Hughes

For the last week of Langston Hughes, I chose a couple of poems that I liked.

50-50 is about a woman that is lonely. A boy told her that if she was smart, she would have him with her all the time. She asked him what she must do to have him as her man. He told her to share her bed. . .and money, too. I really liked the ending of this, because it reminded me of a typical guy. :-P

In Life Is Fine, a man tries to drown himself, but it was so cold that he got out. He was in a sixteen story building and thought about jumping, but it was too high. At the end, he says:

So since I’m still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love-
But for livin’ I was born.

I’ve never thought about commiting suicide because of love, but this poem felt to me like it really had a purpose. Love is no reason to kill yourself, like if some guy turns you down. I really liked the last two lines- like the person had a new life.

In Mother to Son, a woman tells her son that life isn’t easy. Her life wasn’t always best, but she kept climbing the stairs. I wasn’t really sure if she meant just growing up, but EHSS sang a song called Climbing Up the Mountain. She said she was still climbing those stairs. She might be climbing “the stairs of life,” or maybe advancing towards Heaven. I'm not sure what Langston Hughes meant by the stairs, but I think he meant both.