Jimmy's Blues

Jimmy's Blues PDF Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: St Martins Press
ISBN: 9780312051044
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
A collection of poetry echoes many of the themes and lyricism of Baldwin's essays and novels

Jimmy's Blues

Jimmy's Blues PDF Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: St Martins Press
ISBN: 9780312051044
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
A collection of poetry echoes many of the themes and lyricism of Baldwin's essays and novels

The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin

The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin PDF Author: Michele Elam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316240096
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a 'spokesman for the race', although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. Individual essays examine his classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the 'post-race' transnational twenty-first century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assume new urgency.

Blues Poems

Blues Poems PDF Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Everyman's Library
ISBN: 0375414584
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

The Book of the Blues

The Book of the Blues PDF Author: Kay Shirley
Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780793534616
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Blues Lyric Formula

The Blues Lyric Formula PDF Author: Michael Taft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135778035
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
This book is the first rigourous and detailed exploration of exactly how blues singers used formulas to create songs, and it more than amply fills the gap in the the study of the blues, where the structure and content of the lyrics have been less fully explored than the musical form. Focusing on the songs recorded by African-American singers for pre-World War Two commercial recording companies, this is an excellent structural analysis of the formulaic composistion of blues lyrics. This book gives a step-by-step description of the rules implicit in this formulaic structure and inspires new discussion of lyric structures. A wide array of readers will find this insightful and informative: from students of African-American music, cultural studies, history and linguistics, to Blues fans fascinated by exactly how the lyrics of this influential music style are written.

Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande

Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande PDF Author: Jimmy Santiago Baca
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811215756
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
New poetry by the Champion of the International Poetry Slam and winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the prestigious new International Award.

Jelly Roll

Jelly Roll PDF Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375709894
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as “Stride Piano,” “Gutbucket,” and “Can-Can,” these poems have the sharp completeness of vocalized songs and follow a classic blues trajectory: praising and professing undying devotion (“To watch you walk / cross the room in your black / corduroys is to see / civilization start”), only to end up lamenting the loss of love (“No use driving / like rain, past / where you at”). As Young conquers the sorrow left on his doorstep, the poems broaden to embrace not just the wisdom that comes with heartbreak but the bittersweet wonder of triumphing over adversity at all. Sexy and tart, playfully blending an African American idiom with traditional lyric diction, Young’s voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.

Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems

Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems PDF Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807084867
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction, and is the one and only book to fall out of print. This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy’s Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of “Staggerlee wonders” and “Gypsy” to the lyrical beauty of “Some days,” which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald. Nikky Finney’s introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin’s many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages.

The Art of the Wasted Day

The Art of the Wasted Day PDF Author: Patricia Hampl
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407490
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“A sharp and unconventional book — a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion day-dreamers.” —Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne--the hero of this book--who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay. Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love--and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry. Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life. The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.

Miscellaneous Blues

Miscellaneous Blues PDF Author: Erica L. Crump
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983769903
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
"Meet sisters Cookie, Victoria, Mya, and Lola. They call themselves "The Dexter Divas" and pride themselves on always being there for each other. Oldest sister Cookie is trying to keep her marriage on track after her husband throws a curveball in their "perfect marriage." Victoria is trying to lose excess weight off her body as well as dead weight in a slacker live-in boyfriend. Mya is determined to get her "married boyfriend" to divorce his wife and finally marry her. At the same time, she is struggling with her explosive mood swings that she can't seem to control. And Lola, the baby of the family, is finally trying to move past the violent death of her son's father and allow love into her life again. But what happens when love, jealousy, betrayal, and unforgiveness explode at the most inopportune time?"--Publisher's description.