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The weary blues / Langston Hughes ; introduction by Carl Van Vechten ; with a new foreword by Kevin Young.

by Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967.

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Blues (Music) -- Poetry

Blacks -- United States -- Poetry.

American poetry -- Black authors.

American poetry -- 20th century

9780385352970 (hc.)

0385352972 (hc.)

91 pages ; 20 cm.

"Reprint of Langston Hughes' book of poems The Weary Blues with a new introduction by the poet Kevin Young"-- Provided by publisher.

Foreward / Kevin Young -- Introducing Langston Hughes to the Reader / Carl Van Vechten -- Pt. I. The Weary Blues -- The Weary Blues -- Jazzonia -- Negro Dancers -- The Cat and the Saxophone -- Young Singer -- Cabaret -- The Midnight Nan at Leroy's -- To A little Lover-Lass, dead -- Harlem Night Club -- Nude Young Dancer -- Young Prostitute -- To a Black Dancer -- Song for a Banjo Dance -- Blues Fantasy -- Lenox Avenue: Midnight -- Pt. II. Dream Variations -- Dream Variation -- Winter Moon -- Poeme d'Automne -- Fantasy in Purple -- March Moon -- Joy -- Pt. III. The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- The Negro Speaks of Rivers -- Cross -- The Jester -- The South -- As I Grew Older -- Aunt Sue's Stories -- Poem -- Pt. IV. Black Pierrot -- A Black Pierrot -- Harlem Night Song -- Songs to the Dark Wirgin -- Ardella -- Poem-To the Black Beloved -- When Sue Wears Red -- Pierrot -- Pt. V. Water-Front Streets -- Water-Front Streets -- A farewell -- Long Trip -- Port Town -- sea Calm -- Caribbean Sunset -- Young Sailor -- Seascape -- Natcha -- Sea Charm -- Death of an Old Seaman -- Pt. VI. Shadows in the Sun -- Beggar Boy -- Troubled Woman -- Suicide's Note -- Sick Room -- Soledad -- To the Dark Mercedes -- Mexican Market Woman -- After Many Springs -- Young Bride -- The dream Keeper -- Poem (To F. S.) -- Pt. VII. Our Land --Our Land -- Lament for Dark Peoples -- Afraid -- Poem-For the Portrait of an African Boy -- Summer Night -- Disillusion -- Danse Africaine -- The White Ones -- Mother to Son -- Poem -- Epilogue --

"Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. It was Langston Hughes's first book, published by Knopf in 1926, and it is one of the high points of modernism and of what has come to be called the Harlem Renaissance -- that flowering of African American literature and culture in the public's consciousness. 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. In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young suggests that Hughes from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing, and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it. We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America," but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as deeply. "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers / Of the world.""--Publisher.

Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964.

Young, Kevin, 1970-

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