The Weary Blues By Langston Hughes Tone

Langston Hughes employed the structures, themes, words, and rhythms of the blues movement that he had encountered in the field, the country, the city, the stage, or even the alley way. Utilizing the stanza and musical structures in his poetry, Hughes frequently employed the twelve-bar blues structure, which is considered the blues classic form. Much of his poetry posses an identifiable beat or rhythm and read like the verses of the music he loved. These poems even echoed the themes so ritualistic in the blues, such as lost love, sorrow, hopelessness and sorrow (Langston Hughes). Langston Hughes was a major idol of the Harlem Renaissance who borrowed extensively from the blues and jazz in his work, which set the stage for a new custom of African American literacy influences from African American music.

When Langston Hughes was writing his poems, he wanted the reader to get a dive into the life of the black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. In most of his work, Langston writes about the truth and their actual culture such as, both, their love for music and suffering during this time. In Blues

Langston Hughes remains known as the most impressive, durable Negro writer in America. His tone of voice is as sure, and the manner he speaks with is original. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry, Hughes was turning outward using language and themes, attitudes, and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He often employs dialect distinctive of the black urban dweller or the rural black peasant. Throughout Langston Hughes career, he was aware of injustice and oppression, and used his poetry as a means of opposing them. James D. Tyms says, “Hughes writes lyric poems. But his “lyric” persona is often able to copy this social convention of the Negro Folk. Their use of the method of the ballad, to tell others how they feel” (191). Hughes lived as an

Hughes was a great writer with much diversity in his types of writings. His poetry was a way for us to see a picture of urban life during the Harlem Renaissance, the habits, attitudes, and feelings of his oppressed people. These poems did more than reveal the pain of poverty, it also illustrated racial pride and dignity. “His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience” (Wikipedia, Langston Hughes). Hughes was not ashamed of his heritage and his main theme, “black is beautiful,” was expressed and shared to the world through his poetry. During the literary movement, music was central to the cultural movement of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a main feature of Hughes’s poetry. He had an important technical influence by his emphasis on folk, jazz, and blues rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride. Hughes used this unique style of writing because it was important to him to have the readers feel and experience what they were reading, “to recognize the covert rhetoric in lyric means to appreciate the overlap between emotive and discursive poetry. Rooted in song, the lyric reestablishes the ritual of human communion” (Miller 52).

My background as a tenacious student and a minority has allowed me to connect to the poem in ways that I could very much relate to. I have personally lived through the motions of life that he refers to in “Theme for English b”.Langston Hughes’s poem is more about the differences he knows other people see in him or rather on him, and what they are missing. By doing this, Hughes make it clear that the color of his skin plays a crucial role in the way that people think he is like. He finishes by boldly stating what he had been

and for, one of the reasons that Hughes began to draw on the blues tradition for writing his

The Weary Blues, written by Langston Hughes and published in 1926, won Hughes his first poetry prize. Hughes is a well-known African American poet who often wrote about the struggles for African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance, he uses figurative language in the poem to describe loneliness and despair, and the relationship between the speaker and performer, in order to make the reader better understand the blues.

In “Weary Blues” Negros seems to be the subject. ” I heard a Negro play“, “Coming from a black man’s soul”, “With his ebony hands on each ivory key”, etc. you can paint a mental picture of how dark the subject is. (Poets.org) At this point, with every melody in the poem, you know that the person was a Negro. His entire

The poem “The Weary Blues,” by Langston Hughes, focuses on all but the following elements of modernism:

The two poems entitled “Harlem” and “The Weary Blues” where both written in the time if the Harlem renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was time when the people expressed their selves and the hardships and the reality of their times. The two poems are similar in a way. They both take place in Harlem and are both written by Langston Hughes. They both describe some type of sad but energetic tone, also known as blues.

Many writers and artist feel fold art would be the best to show racial pride. James Weldon Johnson used the seven Negro Sermons a Bible turns it into a poem. By the oral tradition this author shows the tradition, plus the culture of belief of what makes them African American. (Doc C) Another way of showing racial pride is through poems by Langston Hughes, he wrote “Home Sick Blues” and “Po’ Boy Blues”. Both of these poems have blues in common in the title. Blues is a musical form created by African American. The readers can feel a negative atmosphere in both of these poems “A terrible thing to have to keep from cryin’ “from “Home Sick Blues” and “I wish I’d never been born” from “PO’ Boy Blues”. It expresses racial pride by what they

Langston Hughes is an extremely successful and well known black writer who emerged from the Harlem Renaissance (“Langston Hughes” 792). He is recognized for his poetry and like many other writers from the Harlem Renaissance, lived most of his life outside of Harlem (“Langston Hughes” 792). His personal experiences and opinions inspire his writing intricately. Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes expresses his discontent with black oppression and focuses on the hardships of his people. Hughes’ heartfelt concern for his people’s struggle evokes the reader’s emotion. His appreciation for black music and culture is evident in his work as well. Langston Hughes is a complex poet whose profound works provide insight into all aspects of black

Hughes was greatly influenced by the culturally prominent jazz music in Harlem He was drawn to places with live music to brainstorm and write. In his uniquely written poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes combined black vernacular and blues rhythms, branching out and creating literature that broke the norm.

     Jazz music is often associated with long, lazy melodies and ornate rhythmical patterns. The Blues, a type of jazz, also follows this similar style. Langston Hughes' poem, "The Weary Blues," is no exception. The sound qualities that make up Hughes' work are intricate, yet quite apparent. Hughes' use of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme in "The Weary Blues" gives the poem a deep feeling of sorrow while, at the same time, allows the reader to feel as if he or she is actually listening to the blues sung by the poem's character.

“The Weary Blues,” by Langston Hughes, tells a story of an unnamed narrator recalling an evening of listening to a man sing the blues one night in Harlem. Hughes uses a somber tone, depressed voice, syntax and imagery as language styles to convey a great deal of suffering that was occurring in Harlem during the mid-1900’s.