The debut collection of the Harlem Renaissance's central poet. Hughes incorporated jazz and blues rhythms into poetry at a time when such forms were considered beneath literary attention, creating the most influential fusion of musical and verbal form in American literary history. "The Weary Blues," "Mother to Son," "The Negro Speaks of Rivers": these poems made a generation of Black Americans feel seen in literature for the first time.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.