The year is 1953 in the Harlem apartment of Negro writer Langston Hughes. Unable to sleep he gets up and begins to write a poem, but finds his living space somehow inhabited by his readers. Exposed, guilt-ridden and fearful of the coming day he confesses how he intends to answer McCarthy's accusations on being a communist. He implores his readers not to abandon him no matter what they read or hear. His confession is intermittently interrupted by flashes of inspiration, seen in projected texts and images, of a word or line for his poem. As he tells the story of what he's written and why, and of his difficult and wonderful life as a writer, the poem continues to grow and clarify as a thing with a life of its own, and together they reveal a portrait of an artist faced with his fears and regrets before the greatest ordeal of his life.
