Verified answer

I just had to write a thesis on this....

In the poem "Dreams Deferred”, Langston Hughes uses rhetorical questions and contradiction to show that dreams are both fragile and combustible.

So the answer is that they are delicate explosives because while they can be easily crushed, they can also boom into a plethora of out comes.

Hope I helped!

Edit

@ Rear Adm. Von Tusch

Would you also say my English professor missed the point?

Sorry you seem to think that. And any way, poetry is so ambiguous that we could very well both be right....But my thesis is professor approved.

Langston Hughes (February a million, 1902 – could 22, 1967) grow to be an American poet, novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist. he's ultimate popular for his artwork in the process the Harlem Renaissance.

I would agree that they can explode. My reason is personal experience. While the poem is about discrimination against African Americans, I'm a woman who works in a male-dominated field (IT). I've been denied jobs because of my gender. I know how it feels. I've felt the inarticulate rage and the frustration and the explosion. I've also felt the festering and hopelessness, but there are still explosions. Hughes was talking about the oncoming explosion of the civil rights movement, which did explode in its own way.

Well that was fun, to watch @DeadlyDancer totally miss the point of this famous poem.

Hughes is not talking about "dreams" in general. And he's not talking about "exploding in a plethora of possibilities." He's talking about the denial of the dream of equality to African Americans, and about a possible "explosion" of violent protest if the denial goes on much longer.