"Life is a barren field" indicates "life devolves into misery and emptiness." Life is a wasteland. Encased in snow This is a line from Langston Hughes's (1902-1967) poetry. He was an American author, poet, and civil rights activist. In addition to writing poems, essays, and novels, he also wrote lyrics for several songs that are now part of the American folk music tradition. Hughes based this poem on a speech given by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), a leading African-American intellectual and activist. In it, Du Bois declares that "the problem before us is not whether we will admit them to citizenship but what kind of citizens we will make them." The phrase "a barren field" refers to a plantation where no crops were planted. It is a metaphor for an area in which nothing good can grow - hence the description "barren". Du Bois was speaking at a conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in May 1926. He had just been elected president of the organization a month earlier. The conference was held in Houston, Texas. The poem is included in a collection called I Wonder As I Wander. It was published posthumously in 1968, eight years after Hughes' death.