THIS WAS THE BLUES OF LANGSTON HUGHES
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Langston Hughes
February 1, 1901-May 22, 1967
A pack of smokes, a desk, a lamp, a typewriter, a telephone, and a nimble-fingered Langston Hughes
James P. Johnson | 1894-1955
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 in 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.
© 2001 and 2006 by Al Young
from The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990-2000
and Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006
- TEACHER RESOURCE FILE
- Internet School Library Media Center
Compiled by Inez Ramsey, James Madison University
E-mail: ramseyil@jmu.edu
- Internet School Library Media Center
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 fabledcrossing: 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 “Our Block’s Childrens Garden”
Langston Hughes testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1953
SHIRLEY EMBRACING SAM, 1952
Gelatin Silver Print
by Roy DeCarava
Nothing in black and white to decipher, no diction
to master, just the tenderest picture – pur fiction.
While Captain Marvel’s alter ego shouted “Shazam!”
Shirley was throwing her arms around Sam.
Not only this: her fresh-done air deserves a kiss,
too, just because a hug, well, how can you miss
your target when you know you know your man?
Sam, he looks like he might have some other plan
up that soft, slow sleeve he is suddenly knuckling.
To keep their domestic economy from buckling,
Korea waged war on Korea. General Ike held forth,
while America glazed over her own South-North
struggle. “Are you now or have you ever been?”
Senator Joseph McCarthy, ugly as homemade sin,
asked over and over and over again. “You can tell
just by looking at him,” Shirley told Sam. “Hell,”
Sam said, “I can tell he prejudiced by the way he talk.
He knows who to strike out, he knows who to walk.”
On some jukebox down the street Roy Hamilton sang
“You’ll Never Walk Alone.” The new song rang
up through the window and rested on Sam’s mind.
Just back happy from his Saturday morning grind
(a job is a job is a job), he’s gotten home early,
even to his own delight. And there stood Shirley,
fragrant, glad to see him again, to have him to herself
for the rest of the weekend. There on a dusted shelf
in the next room, the kitchen, next to the dream-book,
she’s got two tickets for them. Tonight she’ll cook
his favorite supper: meatloaf, rice and butterbeans,
Tonight they’ll duck out on these domestic scenes
their pal Roy DeCarava likes to hang out and shoot.
They’ll put on the dog, get up off some loot,
sip them some Four Roses, some cold Champ Ale.
The dress in the closet she bought at that sale,
Shirley will put the thing on and let her hair down.
They’ll go out and party, catch them some Dinah –
the hell with Korea, the U.S., McCarthy, Red China!
Did Shirley go curl her hair just for Sam? Partly.
Will they miss church tomorrow? No, not hardly.
© 2001 and 2006 by Al Young
from Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems 2001-2006
Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, this poem was composed to celebrate the beautiful, yea-saying spirit of “Shirley Embracing Sam,” one of the many Roy DeCarava photographs that illustrate Langston Hughes’ text for The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a book for younger readers published after the poet’s death.
Poets Marianne Moore and Langston Hughes, New York 1952
Gwendolyn Brooks with Langston Hughes, promoting The Poetry of the Negro (1746-1949), Chicago 1949
Courtesy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigne
Snapshot of Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and James Baldwin
Partial draft typescript of “Harlem” with the poet’s handwritten corrections
Courtesy Kennedy Center
In 1958, in sessions produced by Leonard Feather, Langston Hughes recorded some of his poetry with a band led by Charles Mingus and another led by trumpeter Henry Red Allen | Click here to sample some tracks
Langston Hughes on his Harlem doorstep, 1958
Courtesy Columbia University
Langston Hughes — the suave Ellingtonian
Draft typescript facsimile: The Ballad of Booker T.
Langston Hughes’ liner notes for the 78 rpm album, Josh White Sings Easy (1943)
Josh White as drawn by David Stone Martin
Langston Hughes by Gordon Parks
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Listen to the Weary Blues Poems by Langston Hughes, translated into Spanish by Jorge Heredia, read by the author with music by Charles Mingus and Leonard Feather |
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Escuche el Blues Abatido Poemas de Langston Hughes traducidos al castellano por Jorge Heredia, recitados por el autor con mĂşsica de Charles Mingus y Leonard Feather |
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Read me 1st/LĂ©ase antes Weary Blues/Blues Abatido www.jorgeheredia.com
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From an early age, Langston Hughes heard and spoke Spanish, a language he loved; acquired during extended visits to his father’s estate in Mexico. Later as a working expatriate in France, Hughes learned and studied French, the international language then crucial to aspiring writers. An avid translator, he rendered into English work by Spanish poet-playwright Federico GarcĂa Lorca, Chile’s Gabriela Mistral, Cuba’s Nicolás GuillĂ©n, and Haiti’s Jacques Roumain.
In POETRY SPEAKS Expanded (edited by Elise Paschen and Rebekah Presson Mosby), Al Young introduces Langston Hughes
Drowning Saxophone | © Eric Drooker
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Subatomic preon particles | Billiard balls in motion
June 29th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Wow, wonderful Hughes pics. Thanks, Al.