as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His ideas were far different than those of Alain LeRoy Locke. Hughe refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted his poems to reflect the actual culture of the Blackman. He felt the only way to tell their story properly was by including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. His beautiful poems echoed the deep seated spirit of a people proud of their ancient past. In Hughes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," the verses paint a picture of

ancient history of the Blackman, as well as their promised freedom. "...I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans..." .

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/ prmPID/83

Langston Hughes

2006 by the Academy of American Poets

In his novels, author F.Scott Fitzgerald portrayed America's dream of a pyramid of wealth and freedom as a mere illusion. How ironic that he was second cousin three times removed to Francis Scott Key, author of the National Anthem. He was born was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. What really seemed to catapult him into his successful writing were his romantic failures. His rise and fall with various bouts with alcohol seemed to echo those standards he thought most lacking in the American dream. The chief themes of his novels centered around aspirations of idealism and mutability or loss. Fitzgerald became identified with the Jazz Age: It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire, he wrote in Echoes of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald connected his writing of the novel with the age of prohibition, the boom of the 1920'a as well as the crash of the 1930's. One of his trademark novels, "The Great Gatsby" marked the pinnacle of Fitzgerald's technique, as well as highlighting the great excesses of American life in the roaring twenties.

A brief life of Fitzgerald

http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/b iography.html

December 4, 2003

Matthew J. Bruccoli's

The real excesses of American life could not have been truly enjoyed had it not been for the heroic efforts portrayed by characters in Earnest Hemingway's novels. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on

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