A dream deferred

[osprey_archer]

Harlem
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Did you first run across this in A Raisin in the Sun? That's where I first did, when we read it in school. Hughes's poem was an epigraph at the front of the play. I loved it. (Still do.) I love especially that the last line is italicized. Italics are a powerful tool, and not to be used lightly--and this is exactly the right sort of place to use them. The explosion is imminent.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've never read A Raisin in the Sun. I first read the poem...actually, I don't remember where I first read the poem. It may have been in one of my literature textbooks; when I got bored in class I would flip through them looking for things to read.