Langston Hughes is generally acknowledged to be the major Afro-American poet of the twentieth century, yet the myth persists that despite his over nine hundred published poems he was more an entertainer than a serious poet…. Because so many of his early volumes are out-of-print and available only in rare book collections, the general public and many critics are unaware of the vast number of revisions Hughes has made over the years.

These changes vary from minor alterations in punctuation to additions of entire stanzas reflecting changes in Hughes's philosophical stance. (p. 115)

Selected Poems contains twenty-two revised poems from The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jew, Hughes's first two volumes of poetry. In most cases the revisions consist merely of eliminating commas preceding dashes at the end of lines. Another revision found often in poetry from these two volumes is the elimination of a Dunbar-like dialect...