Langston Hughes & the Blues

Langston Hughes & the Blues PDF Author: Steven Carl Tracy
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069857
Category : AFRICAN AMERICANS--FOLKLORE.
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
"Drawing on a deep understanding of the shades and structures of the blues, Steven C. Tracy elucidates the vital relationship between this musical form and the art of Langston Hughes, preeminent poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Tracy provides a cultural context for the poet's work and shows how Hughes mined African-American oral and literary traditions to create his blues-inspired poetry. Through a detailed comparison of Hughes's poems to blues texts, Tracy demonstrates how the poetics, structures, rhythms, and musical techniques of the blues are reflected in Hughes's experimental forms. The volume also includes a discography of recordings by the blues artists--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others-who most influenced Hughes, updated in a new introduction by the author."

Langston Hughes & the Blues

Langston Hughes & the Blues PDF Author: Steven Carl Tracy
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252069857
Category : AFRICAN AMERICANS--FOLKLORE.
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Drawing on a deep understanding of the shades and structures of the blues, Steven C. Tracy elucidates the vital relationship between this musical form and the art of Langston Hughes, preeminent poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Tracy provides a cultural context for the poet's work and shows how Hughes mined African-American oral and literary traditions to create his blues-inspired poetry. Through a detailed comparison of Hughes's poems to blues texts, Tracy demonstrates how the poetics, structures, rhythms, and musical techniques of the blues are reflected in Hughes's experimental forms. The volume also includes a discography of recordings by the blues artists--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others-who most influenced Hughes, updated in a new introduction by the author."

The Weary Blues

The Weary Blues PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486850560
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 99

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Book Description
Immediately celebrated as a tour de force upon its release, Langston Hughes's first published collection of poems still offers a powerful reflection of the Black experience. From "The Weary Blues" to "Dream Variation," Hughes writes clearly and colorfully, and his words remain prophetic.

The Weary Blues

The Weary Blues PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
"Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem)--"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"--Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race. Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with precocious confidence and clarity"--From publisher's description (a later edition).

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 067972818X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in Black writing in America—the poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death and represent stunning work from his entire career. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night." They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture. They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror—and the marrow of the bone of life." The collection includes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

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.

Laughing to Keep from Crying

Laughing to Keep from Crying PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
A novel about Black life.

First Book Of Jazz

First Book Of Jazz PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Ecco
ISBN: 9780880014243
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
An introduction to jazz music by one of our finest writers. Langston Hughes, celebrated poet and longtime jazz enthusiast, wrote The First Book of Jazz as a homage to the music that inspired him. The roll of African drums, the dancing quadrilles of old New Orleans, the work songs of the river ports, the field shanties of the cotton plantations, the spirituals, the blues, the off-beats of ragtime -- in a history as exciting as jazz rhythms, Hughes describes how each of these played a part in the extraordinary history of jazz.

Something About the Blues

Something About the Blues PDF Author: Al Young
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402249381
Category : Blues (Music)
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description


The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes PDF Author: James Langston Hughes
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
ISBN: 0679426310
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 738

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Book Description
Here, for the first time, is a complete collection of Langston Hughes's poetry - 860 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during five turbulent decades, from the 1920s through the 1960s.

Langston Hughes and the Blues

Langston Hughes and the Blues PDF Author: Steven C. Tracy
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252056949
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
The shades and structures of the blues had an immense impact on the poetry of Langston Hughes. Steven C. Tracy provides a cultural context for Hughes’s work while revealing how Hughes mined Black oral and literary traditions to create his poetry. Comparing Hughes’s poems to blues texts, Tracy reveals how Hughes’s experimental forms reflect the poetics, structures, rhythms, and musical techniques of the music. Tracy also offers a discography of recordings by the artists--Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and others--who most influenced the poet.