Langston Hughes

One great poet is Langston Hughes, who has a very American, turn of the century style [in the vein of say Hemingway] but he's got real depth to his work. Here are two great poems:

Bouquet

Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow 

The South

The lazy, laughing South 

With blood on its mouth. 

The sunny-faced South,

Beast-strong,

Idiot-brained. 

The child-minded South 

Scratching in the dead fire’s ashes 

For a Negro’s bones.

Cotton and the moon, 

Warmth, earth, warmth, 

The sky, the sun, the stars, 

The magnolia-scented South.

Beautiful, like a woman, 

Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,

Passionate, cruel, 

Honey-lipped, syphilitic-- 

That is the South.

And I, who am black, would love her 

But she spits in my face. 

And I, who am black, 

Would give her many rare gifts

But she turns her back upon me. 

So now I seek the North-- 

The cold-faced North, 

For she, they say,

Is a kinder mistress, 

And in her house my children 

May escape the spell of the South.