<P> Montage of a Dream Deferred is a book - length poem suite published by Langston Hughes in 1951 . Its jazz poetry style focuses on descriptions of Harlem (a neighborhood of New York City) and its mostly African - American inhabitants . The original edition was 75 pages long and comprised 91 individually titled poems, which were intended to be read as a single long poem . Hughes' prefatory note for the book explained his intentions in writing the collection: </P> <P> In terms of current Afro - American popular music and the sources from which it progressed--jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie - woogie, and be-bop--this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of a jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and disc - tortions of the music of a community in transition . </P>

Montage of a dream deferred langston hughes poem