Montage of a Dream Deferred.

HUGHES, Langston.

$3,800.00

Item Number: 129081

New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951.

First edition of Hughes’ classic jazz poem suite. Octavo, original boards. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, “For Marion ~ good wishes ever, Sincerely ~ Langston New York January 30, 1951.” The recipient, Marion Palfi, was a German-born social-documentary photographer who fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1940. Her work explored the concepts of social injustices in America and included many photographic studies that focused on racial injustice against African Americans, poverty in cities, and racial discrimination against Native Americans. Hughes was an admirer of her work and did a great deal to support and encourage her, notably commenting: “A Palfi photograph brings us face to face with hidden realities that its surface only causes us to begin to explore.” Near fine in the rare original dust jacket which is in near fine condition. Jacket design by Walter Miles.

"Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard the boogie-woogie rumble of a dream deferred?" So begins this bold and exciting portrait of a community and a people in transition, one of the fullest portraits of Harlem in Hughes' body of work. These "poems within a poem" are not shallow paper-and-ink caricatures of living people. They are the flesh and bone and marrow of life. Here is Harlem of the bitter dreams forever deferred, Harlem of the laughter of kids playing stickball and dodging cars in the streets, Harlem of the fishtail Cadillac and Sugar Hill duplex set. Here is popular poetry in the best sense of the word by America's "Negro Poet Laureate."