Langston Hughes

I have been reading Langston Hughes' THE WEARY BLUES (Knopf 1939). At first, on the page, the poems seem simple, and yet when read aloud the rhythmical blues can be heard, the beat like a slow swaying dance. Weariness is the opposite of energy. He was raised in Harlem with 8 siblings and a father who struggled to feed them. He lived when lynching was popular in this country. Like so many poems, Hughes' poems are meant to be heard and recited, breathed forth from a living body. They are living things. He was exiled in a sense from the South he loved. Here is the beginning of the title poem:

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!

This collection also contains a favorite poem of mine. Possibly the poem is one of my top 10 favorites. It is called THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS. My new collection has a poem that echoes this (I can only hope), but the river I write about is the Rio Grande. Hughes' river was the vibrant culture of African-Americans, the beating swoon of the blues, the jazzy horns and glitzy renaissance of his era, the mystical and varied history of a people. Hughes had an ear for musicality of a line, and I think he offers young poets a great lesson in listening.

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

(To W.E.B. DuBois)

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
Went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
Bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The poem takes the first person I, but applies it to his people. Here the political is artistic, subtle, yet strangely powerful, almost surreal, as if a dream. Such bold risk; here the first person "I" defies all criticisms of self-indulgence and shows what a poem can do with the first person "I" singing. And that's all I have to say about first person I, but Robert Vasquez has some interesting commentary on the "I" in contemporary times at his blog California Poet.