I walked into a Barnes and Noble yesterday (yes, there’s still a few of them around) and went looking for the Poetry section. I had Langston Hughes on my mind and wanted to see what they had. After 25 minutes of looking around (I didn’t asked the Info Guy sitting at the desk) I finally found it, a little northeast of the magazine section and just south of Humor. The entire section was one bookshelf — maybe 100 books in total, multiple copies of some editions. Compared to IT, Sports, Fiction and Travel, it seemed rather lost and lonely. Like one package of your favorite cereal at Vons — just so you keep coming back. So, I’m happy I read this article. Poetry is a tough gig. Very personalized; everyone who reads a poem, I think, feels like it was written just for them. We need more of it. Simple and straight to the heart.

They had two Langston Hughes’ books — I bought one.