Mandeville 1 Savanah Mandeville English 495: Senior Seminar Dr. Toliver 3 December 2013 Langston Hughes: The Poet, the Dreamer, the Blues Man Langston Hughes is counted among the top modernist poets of the 20 th century, but he was the first to incorporate music into his work. Deeply passionate about the working class African American, from the masses of his brethren who lived in the poor inner-cities of Harlem in New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C. to those who worked in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, the lumber mills of Texas, or the tobacco fields of Georgia. What all of them had in common was a certain style of music, born out of slave spirituals, to get them through the struggles of their lives as second class citizens. It was a music, as Langston Hughes put it, to laugh to keep from crying. That music is the blues. As a poet, Hughes was able to incorporate his love of the blues into his work, in terms of both content and rhythm, making American poetry and music go hand in hand for the first time. Hughes use of the blues as a framework helped to illustrate daily life for the average African American. In an early review of his first book of poetry The Weary Blues, Charles Johnson Carolina Magazine wrote, His subjects have been cabaret singers, porters, street walkers, elevator boys, the long range of hard luck victims, Beale Street and Railroad Avenue, prayer meetings, sinners, and hard working men (Mullen 145). In fact, his poem, The Weary
Mandeville 2 Blues was based upon his first experience with the style in Kansas City at an open air theater on Independence Avenue where a group of blind musicians sang lyrics Hughes would never forget: I got de Weary Blues And I can t be satisfied Got de Weary Blues And can t be satisfied I ain t happy no mo And I wish that I had died (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. 1 16) Following high school, Hughes went against the wishes of his father and began attending Columbia University in 1921 in New York City because he wanted to see Harlem. He d begun writing in high school The Negro Speaks of Rivers was published shortly after his graduation and coincidentally, his increased activity as a writer overlapped with the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of the blues as a popular musical form. Ted Gioia, author of The History of Jazz, writes of the two Harlems that would have existed during Hughes time there. The Harlem of literary aspirations and the Harlem of jazz and blues were, if not at war, at least caught up in an uncomfortable truce? The piano was often the battleground between these two vision of black artistic achievement The instrument represented conflicting possibilities a pathway for assimilating traditional highbrow culture, a call card of lowbrow nightlife, a symbol of mid-class prosperity, or, quite simply, a means of making a living (95-96). Gioia is saying that music, namely the piano, fit into the lives of all black creators in Harlem. It can be heard in the jazz and blues music that permeated the entire country with
Mandeville 3 influence in both the rural South with Ma Rainey, and the sophisticated styles of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong who both hit NYC in the mid-1920s (Seig). Langston Hughes was there to see it all. When his father refused to fund his education at Columbia any longer, Hughes set sail for West Africa and Europe. He lived in Paris in 1923 working as a dishwasher in a cabaret. It was there that he first attempted to incorporate the syncopated rhythm of the cabaret music in his poetry (Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes). With the influence of the flourishing creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, growing popularity of blues and jazz, and of his travels, Hughes first poetry book The Weary Blues is published in 1926. The last stanza of the poem for which the book is named harkens back to his first experience with blues as a child in Kansas City: Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more I Got the Weary Blues And I can t be satisfied. Got the Weary Blues And I can t be satisfied I ain t happy no mo And I wish that I had died. And far into the night he crooned that tune. The stars went out and so did the moon. The singer stopped playing and went to bed While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that s dead.
Mandeville 4 (Ramazani, Ellman, O Clair 688-89) Clearly, the poetry of Langston Hughes is deeply influenced by the blues. Specifically, though, many poems actually follow a blues formula of sorts. The Blues, unlike the Spirituals, have a strict poetic pattern, writes Arnold Rampersad in the first volume of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes. One lone line repeated and third line to rhyme with the first two. Sometimes the second line in repetition is slightly changed and sometimes, but very seldom, it is omitted (73). To illustrate, here is a section of Blue Spirit Blues sung by the Empress of the Blues Bessie Smith, recorded in 1929, next to the first two stanzas from Hughes Gal s Cry for a Dying Lover, published in 1927: Blue Spirit Blues, Bessie Smith Had a dream last night that I was dead, I had a dream last night that I was dead, Evil spirits all around my bed. The Devil came an grabbed my hand, The Devil came an grabbed my hand, Took me way down to that redhot land. (Oakley 101) Gal s Cry for a Dying Lover, Langston Hughes Heard de owl a hootin, Knowed somebody s bout to die. Heard de owl a hootin, Knowed somebody s bout to die. Put ma head un neath de kiver, Started in to moan an cry. Hound dawg s barkin Means he s gonna leave this world. Hound dawg s barkin Means he s gonna leave this world. O Lawd have mercy On a po black girl. (Ramazini, Ellmann, O Clair 691-92) Although Hughes first lines are longer, both pieces follow the same pattern. They both have two repeating lines followed by a third, new line that rhymes with the first two.
Mandeville 5 Furthermore, they both deal with themes of death. It s also important to note that Hughes poem is written from a female point of view. In the 1920s, the majority of blues recordings were sung by women. During that time, white and middle-class black families were ambivalent or even hostile to blues music, which was considered classless and rough (Gioia 95). The blues had been a force since the late 19 th century when sharecroppers brought a unique sound through the southern country side in the form of jug bands and minstrel shows, with songsters Charlie Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson gathering steam (Mandel). The first commercial recording, though, took place on Valentine s Day 1920 when Mamie Smith cut The Thing Called Love and You Can t Keep a Good Man Down (Oakley 83-84). Mamie Smith s popularity skyrocketed because like many of the early women singers, with their popular song orientation and lightness of touch seem to reflect a feeling of joy and hope in keeping with the expectations of the black migrants newly arrived in the cities, said Oakley (Oakley 85). In other words, female singers were more acceptable. A number of Hughes poems are written from the female point of view, including Lament over Love, Song for a Dark Girl, and Hard Daddy, all written in the 1920s, most likely because that was the Blues climate at the time (Ramazini, Ellmann, O Clair 690-693). After the 20s, women s domination of the Blues began to wane. With Hughes poetry so strikingly similar to Blues music, one has to wonder why he is a poet and not a blues musician. Humorously enough, Hughes was a terrible singer. During a 14 month stint in the mid-1920s in Washington D.C. Hughes was so taken by the spirit of the African American community there that he often sang openly the hymns, blues, and jazz songs he heard until one day when a man rushed over, concerned that the young poet was ill and groaning, when in fact he was just singing (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 102).
Mandeville 6 Hughes time in D.C. was valuable to his later success. He spent a lot of time on Seventh Street in the poorest black neighborhood where Hughes would write that they looked at the dome of the Capitol and laughed out loud (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 102). During his time there, he wrote more poems than he d ever done before which would become, what many critics call the zenith of Hughes blues poems, a collection called Fine Clothes to the Jew, published in 1927 (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 103). This collection had a rawer, honest approach than The Weary Blues. For example, Saturday Night deals with many unsophisticated themes: Play it once. O, play some more. Charlie is a gambler An Sadie is a whore. A glass o whiskey An a glass o gin: Strut, Mr. Charlie, Till de dawn comes in. Pawn yo gold watch An diamond ring. Git a quart o licker, Let s shake dat thing! (Hughes, Langston, and Arnold Rampersad. The Poems, 1921-1940, 90-91) At the time, not everyone appreciated Hughes honest approach to poeticizing the life of the lower-class black American. To many, Hughes had let out the secret that white and middle
Mandeville 7 class black Americans wanted to keep under-wraps and ignored. Some negative critiques of the book include: These poems are unsanitary, insipid, and repulsing, The Chicago Whip about 100 pages of trash It reeks of gutter and sewer, William M. Kelly of the New York Amsterdam News. J.A. Rogers of the Pittsburg Courier called it piffling trash that left him positively sick. A study in the perversion of the Negro, The Tribune (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 140) Hughes agreed in an interview in the Chicago Defender that Fine Clothes to the Jew was harder and more cynical than previous work but that painting a picture of real life is necessary. My poems are indelicate. But so is life, he said (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 1: 145). During the 1930s, Hughes work shifted to a more international, political style. Rampersad says in the documentary Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes that the 30s were a low point for him because of various disappointments and the Great Depression and he felt it was time to reaffirm the sense of himself as a social poet and commitment to the masses of people, (Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes). Thus, Hughes began to look at the plight of black people around the world and more socialist viewpoints were incorporated into his work. He even spent ample time traveling the Soviet Union and Spain (during the Spanish Civil War). Some critics say this era is his most radical work (Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes). The 1940s though, shifted Hughes attention back to the United States and African American expression through music. The late 30 and early 40s saw the onset of boogie-woogie,
Mandeville 8 be-bop jazz, and swing. These styles were originated in Kansas City where Count Bassie and Luxe Lewis played the piano with a new bass pattern than the stride piano of James P. Johnson that dominated the 20s and 30s (Seig). He heard the unmistakable sounds of cultural change A new musical idiom, tortured in comparision to past harmonies, with faster harmonic and rhythmic changes than ever before, now rebuffed and sweetened, whitened strains of wing the dominant popular music of the war years and epitomized the new fragmentation of black cultural consciousness, writes Arnold Rampersad in the second volume of The Life of Langston Hughes (151). This new style of music coupled with his financial success left Hughes feeling disconnected from the black community, a feeling he often had during his career, but as in the past, it propelled him rather than halted him. In a single week, he wrote a book-length poem in five sections called Montage of a Dream Deferred, which was published in 1951. The book includes such poems as Dream Boogie, Boogie: 1 A.M., and Dream Boogie: Variation (Ramazani, Ellmann, O Clair 700, 703, 704). Boogie, 1 A.M., for example, gives tribute to the instrumental style of boogiewoogie, but is very much a poem: Good evening, daddy! I know you ve heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace.
Mandeville 9 (Ramazani, Ellmann, O Clair 703) With the shift in musical styles, one can see the change in Hughes poetic form. No longer does he follow the blues-formula used by Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Nevertheless, his work still carries a song-like quality. The beat of a drum or stroke of a guitar wouldn t be out of place behind a rhythmic reading of his poems. Langston Hughes poems walk the fine line between read-poetry and spoken-poetry. This can be partially attributed to the dialectic writingstyle, but the underlying beat is so strongly palpable that the poems yearn to be read aloud. Hughes work during the first half of the 20 th century is distinctive from other modernist poets of the era including Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and e.e. cummings. Perhaps not surprisingly, to some observers his poetry is far too simple to be admired, said Rampersad (Hughes, Rampersad 4). The reason for his simplicity though is deliberate. He wanted his poetry to be understood clearly. In a way, he was a sociologist and a poet. He wanted to educate America, and teachers must be clear and concise. He shunned the use of learned allusions, arcane vocabulary, and complicated syntax in favor of persistent clarity, wrote Rampersad (Hughes, Rampersad 4). In his role as an educator, Hughes even went so far as to write semi-literate verse for a time mainly to propagandize the black masses on issues such as the Spanish Civil War and, more recently, the gravity of the threat posed by the Nazis and the Japanese, (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes 2: 62). His 1943 pamphlet of 23 pages called Jim Crow s Last Stand employs the use of demotic, semi-literate poetry in about half the poems. One example is The Black Man Speaks : I swear to the Lord
Mandeville 10 I still can t see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. I swear to my soul I can t understand Why Freedom don t apply To the black man (Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. 2 59) Many readers were surprised that such inadequate verse could come from such a renowned poet as Langston Hughes, but to write poorly is the same poetic freedom that many of the modernist poets were employing at the same. One could argue that writing in dead languages, like Pound, or in rearranged words, like cummings, is just as poor of poetry because no one can read it. It depends on the purpose that the poet is setting out to achieve. Additionally, to argue that Hughes doesn t have a place in modernist poetry would be to overlook an entire segment of the genre. Poets similar to Hughes like Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Sterling Brown make up African American modernist poetry in the same way that Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Amy Lowell make up the Imagists. Modernist poetry cannot be defined by any specific standard, and all sub-categories should be considered. To say that Hughes is only part of the African American tradition of poetry wouldn t be correct either. He was greatly influenced by the work of Carl Sandburg because he wrote of average people in the wheat fields in the Midwest, the steel workers of Chicago (Voices and
Mandeville 11 Visions: Langston Hughes). Walt Whitman wrote of the workaday American as well in I Hear America Singing. Is not I, too, Sing America a response to Song of Myself? Langston Hughes was a writer of reality. He sought to bring to light the world of the working-class African America, and challenge the ideals of a nation when it came to racism, poverty, and cultural norms. He did so by mixing the power of music a force of expression for the African American since the spiritual with the power of the written word. For him, it was through the blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, and swing. When Hughes put pen to paper, he was not only a poet, but a teacher and activist. He once said, The writer certainly has special duties, I would say, to society, because the written word is a force, and to misuse that power and to use it for false or ugly or lying purposes, would seem to me morally wrong (Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes). During Hughes long career, he fulfilled that duty and used his power for the purpose of freedom and equality.
Mandeville 12 Works Cited Bluesland: A Portrait of American Music. Dir. Ken Mandel. Masters of American Music, 1993. Videocassette. Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Hughes, Langston, and Arnold Rampersad. The Poems, 1921-1940. Columbia: University of Missouri, 2001. Print. Mullen, Edward J. Critical Essays on Langston Hughes. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1986. Print. Oakley, Giles. The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues. New York: Da Capo, 1997. Print. Ramazani, Jahan, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O'Clair. "Langston Hughes." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. 684-704. Print. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print. The Story of Jazz. Dir. Mathew Seig. Masters of American Music, n.d. Videocassette. Voices and Visions: Langston Hughes. The Annenberg/CPB Collection, 1988. Videocassette.