MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED

Poems of Harlem, loosely strung together with the twilight, flickering moods of a jazz tune, with a constant drumming beat of heart sickness and bitterness at a ""dream deferred"". Occasionally, it is true, the demanding re-bop rhythm in some of the sections overwhelms the basic seriousness, but in general the poems speak out of the idiom, speak of husbands and wives, lovers, movies, neon signs, landlords, English themes, funerals, Joe Louis, lamp poet philosophies, and a dream of a Freedom Train with no Jim Crow signs. It is his generous and fierce love of human beings and gift of expression in terms of a people's speech, which gives Mr. Hughes' work its great appeal. However, its greatest value lies in its articulation of the Negross' demand for respect and justice in a hostile white world. And yet Mr. Hughes hints at a solution in a brief scrap of poetry called Subway Rush Hour:""so near -- no room for fear"". Predictable Hughes sales.