Poetry Corner

April Rain Song

By Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops

Let the rain sing you a lullaby

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk

The rain makes running pools in the gutter

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night

And I love the rain.

This poem is in the public domain

About this poem: While some have criticized April Rain Song for lacking depth, others are drawn to his words simply because they also delight in the rain.

About this poet: James Mercer Langston Hughes (1901–1967). An inventor of “jazz poetry” and a member of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes was also a novelist and playwright Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who cited Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of Black life in America from the 1920s to the 1960s. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). Unlike other notable Black poets of the period, such as Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of Black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language, alongside their suffering. His play written with Zora Neale Hurston can be found on http://projectgutenbergproject.blogspot.com