Such was the blues
of Langston Hughes xxxx
What was the blues
of Langston Hughes?

Like democracy, this page is always under reconstruction

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africawithin.com

“My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Henry Armstrong … I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.”
– Langston Hughes
(Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary)

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2012

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Clarence Lang named 2011 Langston Hughes Visiting Professor

Courtesy The Oread

When one looks at African American social movements of the 20th century, the political motivations and leaders of those efforts naturally come to mind. Clarence Lang, the 2011 Langston Hughes Visiting Professor, works to look deeper at such movements, to find out how they were informed by the every day activities of working class African Americans …

>>> Click here to read the whole story >>>

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Langston Hughes in 1925

Langston Hughes in 1939

Photographs by Carl Van Vechten

Langston Hughes in 1940

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
–Langston Hughes
(“Democracy”)

Clickable

Langston Hughes

February 1, 1902~May 22, 1967

Courtesy photo

A pack of smokes, a desk, a lamp, a typewriter, a telephone, and a nimble-fingered Langston Hughes

Courtesy photo

James P. Johnson | 1894-1955 Master stride pianist and Harlem composer of “Carolina Shout” and “The Charleston,”"You’ve Got to Be Modernistic,” “Snowy Morning Blues,” symphonic scores, and further classics.

SNOWY MORNING BLUES

in tribute to James P. Johnson & Langston Hughes

New York, you know, has its New Yorks,
Manhattan her Queens, the Bronx
keepers of flames with all their names intact.
Now that’s a fact. Upside it, though,
you’ll put your heart and everything
you know or thought you knew of snow.

When Snowy Morning Blues plays James P. Johnson’s
game of catch-me-if-you-can, you can. He could, too.
New York ain’t no last word, you know.
Nothing’s what it used to be. And you, the you who sees
out past the end of the world, this snow, this wee wind-
fall he fells us with under eaves the way we all fall
under suspicion in detective movies.
Blam! Blame it on the blues, blame it on a blizzard.

Diamonded, grounded in its ice cream crisscross,
snow makes you take to the country again, harmonica in hand,
craving the guitar of a pianistic You-Gotta-Be-Modernistic
genius — you can’t get into this. Let snow tell its own story.
Let the blues roll on. Let snow fall right on time this time
blue, blank, blackening the city-within-a-city christened
in Dutch: Harlem, Haarlem,
Haaaarrrrrlem.
Vermeer, beware.

Al Young

© 2001, 2006 and 2007 by Al Young

from The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000; reprinted in Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry

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Historic photo

Langston Hughes in Lawrence, Kansas: Photographs & Biographical Resources
by Denise Low and T.F. Pecore Weso

Langston Hughes, the great American poet who inspired the Harlem Renaissance, spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas. Authors Denise Low and T.F. Pecore Weso assemble photos & new research about Lawrence sites associated with Langston Hughes. Hughes lived with his grandmother in Lawrence much of the time from his birth in 1902 until his grandmother’s death in 1915. Because of the efforts of Lawrence preservationists, many of the structures are still standing.

LANGSTON HUGHES at PAL
(Perspectives in American Literature):
A Research and Reference Guide
An Ongoing Project
© Paul P. Reuben

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Langston Hughes, the busboy-poet, Washington, DC, early 1920s

« Read the 1967 NY Times obituary account of how busboy on-duty Langston Hughes got “discovered” after he slipped three poems under poet Vachel Lindsay’s luncheon plate at the Wardman Park Hotel, where young Hughes worked. »

Visit the website of DC’s Busboys and Poets, a restaurant, bookstore, fair trade market and gathering place, where people can discuss issues of social justice and peace. Each Busboys and Poets location should enhance the community — allowing us to bring together a diverse clientele reflective of the surrounding neighborhoods. Busboys and Poets creates an environment where shared conversations over food and drink allow the progressive, artistic and literary communities to dialogue, educate and interact. Busboys and Poets is a community gathering place.

First established in 2005, Busboys and Poets was created by owner Anas “Andy” Shallal, an Iraqi-American artist, activist and restaurateur. After opening, the flagship location at 14th and V Streets, NW (Washington DC), the neighboring residents and the progressive community, embraced Busboys, especially activists opposed to the Iraq War. Busboys and Poets is now located in three distinctive neighborhoods in the Washington Metropolitan area and is a community resource for artists, activists, writers, thinkers and dreamers.

BRASS SPITTOONS

by Langston Hughes

Clean the spittoons, boy.
Detroit,
Chicago,
Atlantic City,
Palm Beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
Hey, boy!
A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
Hey, boy! A nickel,
A dime,
A dollar, Two dollars
Buys shoes for the baby.
House rent to pay.
Gin on Saturday,
Church on Sunday.
My God!
Babies and gin and church and women and
Sunday all mixed up with dimes and dollars
and clean spittoons and house rent to pay.
Hey, boy!
A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord,
Bright polished brass like the cymbals
Of King David’s dancers,
Like the wine cups of Solomon.
Hey, boy!
A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord.
A clean bright spittoon all newly polished –
Come ‘ere boy!

© Estate of Langston Hughes

This spittoon-shaped poem first appeared in New Masses, December 1926; reprinted in Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927.

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Al Young comments:
Reading in my late teens I Wonder As I Wander — Langston Hughes’ autobiographical follow-up to The Big Sea – I was enthralled and inspired by the tales he weaves of his travels throughout the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, Europe, the USSR, Soviet Asia, and China. One of Hughes’ lingering memoirs describes a voyage that he and 20 other African Americans took to Russia during the Great Depression to make a movie called Black and White. While his 1956 account of this episode does not match up with documents lately uncovered in the U.S. and in Russia, Hughes’ socio-romantic flashback lives on in imagination. This sunny picture invites us to peer into the faces of some amazingly contemporary-looking passengers, who made that fabled crossing: Langston Hughes with his friends aboard the Europa-Bremen, June 17, 1932. Seated front center from left to right are Louise Thompson Patterson and Dorothy West. On board ship was also Ralph Bunche, who was visiting Paris with Alain Locke.

Photograph courtesy of Yale University Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Hughes poses with neighborhood kids in the cramped, flowering confines of what they called “Our Block’s Childrens Garden” — and long before seed-leasing and genetic modification became commonplace.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Visit Santa Clara County poet laureate Sally Ashton’s blogspot

* Sally Ashton’s three-voice poem, Stateside, at 99 POEMS FOR THE 99 PERCENT, a blog featuring 99 poems that address the social, political, economic, aesthetic, and cultural realities of the 99 percent

Read “In your body all bodies lie,” the Kenneth Patchen prose-poem that continues to inspire Al Young

Courtesy photo

Jazz & poetry partners Booker Ervin (1930-1970), saxophonist with the Charles Mingus Quintet, and poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

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© David Gross | superbone.com

BOB BROOKMEYER: Trombonist, valve trombonist, bandleader, composer and arranger (1921-2011)

Bob Brookmeyer & Friends (Gary Burton, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Elvin Jones) perform Hoagie Carmichael’s deathless “Skylark” in 1964

BobBrookmeyer.com

Charles Paul  Harris/Getty Images

JOHNNY OTIS: Drummer, vibist, pianist, bandleader, composer, arranger, singer, talent scout, producer, broadcaster, organic farmer, painter, preacher (1921-2012)

The 1989 NPR|Fresh Air Interview

Johnny Otis, R&B’s renaissance man, dies at 90 | Hiram Lee | World Socialist Website | 23 January 2012

Official Johnny Otis website

Courtesy Soul_Portrait

Courtesy newsone.com

ETTA JAMES: Singer, songwriter, bandleader, storyteller (1938-2012)

The 1994 NPR|Fresh Air interview

“Sing like your life depends on it”: Etta James—1938-2012 | Paul Bond | 26 January 2012 | World Socialist Web Site

Beyoncé remembers Etta James

© AP Photo | Ringo H.W. Chiu

Family, friends gather for Etta James’ funeral

Saturday, January 28, 2012  | AP

© NY Times

Etta James: “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” (1962)

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page under construction

AlYoung.org

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Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Marin Poetry Center

MARIN POETRY CENTER presents Indigo Moor, Wanda Phipps, and Al Young. Three nationally acclaimed black poets will read in honor of Martin Luther King for the Marin Poetry Center in San Rafael, CA on Thursday, January 19, from 7:30-9pm.

Click here for further information and driving directions

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DO WE LIVE IN A MEANINGLESS UNIVERSE?
An op-ed from Michael Nagler
and the Metta Center for Nonviolence

Courtesy dreamstime.com

Las Vegas’ Musicians for Peace play tribute to MLK at REVERBNATION

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Francis Miller / Life

Happy Birthday to You

Stevie © Liam Yeates

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Nobelprize.org Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Michael Ochs | Time | Getty Images

Born in Atlanta, Martin Luther King, Jr. moved to Montgomery, AL, with his new wife Coretta in 1955 after King accepted a position as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King met Coretta while he was studying for his Ph.D. at Boston University and they were married in June 1953. Yolanda, their first child, above, was born in November 1955.

© Gene Herrick/AP

Coretta Scott King welcomes her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he leaves a courtroom in Montgomery, Ala., on March 22, 1956

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

Photo circa 1964 – Herman Hiller, New York World-Telegram & Sun – Released into the public domain by the original copyright owner

President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the White House, March 1966

(Photo: Yoichi Okamoto/Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum)

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Audiobook available

Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam

This post features a KPFA Pacifica audio and transcript of the full, lesser known sermon delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, April 30, 1967

The text and audio of “Beyond Vietnam,” the widely circulated sermon of April 4, 1967 (delivered at Riverside Church, NYC), may be viewed here at a link to Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr.Papers Project

The sermon which I am preaching this morning in a sense is not the usual kind of sermon, but it is a sermon and an important subject, nevertheless, because the issue that I will be discussing today is one of the most controversial issues confronting our nation. I’m using as a subject from which to preach, “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam.”

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. “Ye shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall set you free.” Now, I’ve chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we’re always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for in all our history there has never been such a monumental dissent during a war, by the American people.

Polls reveal that almost fifteen million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. And even those millions who do support the war [are] half-hearted, confused, and doubt-ridden. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism, to the high grounds of firm dissent, based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It’s a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.

Yes, we must stand, and we must speak. [tape skip]…have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam. Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns, this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem. This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such. Read the rest of this entry »

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Courtesy Persimmontree.org

Editor, Gail Entrekin

Published by Hip Pocket Press
Managing Editor, Charles Entrekin
Art Editor, Carol White
All work reprinted by permission of authors

The canary in the coal mine was a primitive early warning system used by miners to alert themselves to poison gases seeping into the mines. If the canary was found dead, it was time to get out quick. As a metaphor, its significance for me includes not only the salvation of the humans, but also the casual loss of the canary, that fragile and innocent bird with its lovely song, sacrificed without a passing regret. So often the poets of a culture are the canaries, the first ones to be hurt by trends so large that they are not immediately visible. This time the poets are raising our voices on behalf of the natural world, which cannot articulate its plight.

Issue Number 15, Winter 2011-12

• Northing | Clara Quinlan

• After Apples, Listening | Tom Sheehan

• Chinook Coming Home | Penelope La Montagne

• Folding Together| M Jackson

• Oak Tree Grove | Allegra Jostad Silberstein

• Rebellion of the Salinas | Robert Coats

• Release | Lissa Kiernan

• Remnants | John Smith

• The Deep Frozen Desert | David Chorlton

• The Night the Crickets Began To Sing | Gail Larrick

• Tree-Trimmers | Eileen Malone

• Wind as Conceptual Artist Lois Marie Harrod

© 2011 by Hip Pocket Press and each individual contributor

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