Montage of a Dream Deferred is a work of freeverse poetry describing different elements of life in Harlem. Although Hughes asserted that the book is intended to be read as a single long poem, it consists of eighty-seven individually titled short works, many of which were previously published as stand-alone poems. The poems are linked stylistically and thematically, with certain phrases appearing as refrains in multiple pieces. Many of the poems consist of less than twenty lines, and some are as short as three lines. In the years after the book's initial publication, Hughes made minor changes to several of the poems that were incorporated into later editions; the versions reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes reflect these minor changes. The poems discussed here are an overview of the entire work.