[New-Poetry] Langston Hughes/ W. Dixon, Robert Johnson, etc--

[karen]

Hi Chris-

We've met before in SF.  How are you?  And greetings to the list.  I'm
mostly a lurker.

Anyway, I love Hughes.  I think he does indeed stand up on the page.
Maybe it's because I live in Harlem for the time being. I keep
returning to his poetry over and over again lately.  It's really fused
to this place.  And everything that goes with it.  The frantic,
rhythmic activity.  The buses hissing down 125th.  The loud voices,
the boisterousness, the joy, the pride, the sorrow. Sometimes the
desperation to reach out and hold anything close that won't slip away.
 It all gets meshed together here in one big roaring experience.
Folks are pretty open about their moods.  People here remember you and
say hi.  There is a certain romance he captures while never forgetting
that hard stuff that makes Harlem's musical voice so unique, so tough,
and so tender.

And, no, I'm not much of a fan of slam poety, etc, etc.  But I try and
keep my mind open.  Still, I connect with Hughes.

One poem in particular that I've just been reading this week while
commuting to work on the D train is this one:

Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night
and wrap around you,
Take the neon lights and make a crown,
Take the Lenox Avenue busses,
Taxis, subways,
And for your love song tone their rumble down.
Take Harlem's heartbeat,
Make a drumbeat,
Put it on a record, let it whirl,
And while we listen to it play,
Dance with you till day--
Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

-Langston Hughes


-karen

>
> In a message dated 7/2/2006 7:43:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes:
> Hey, I got in a really good discussion the other day about Langston
> Hughes' blues poems
> (and yes I know that he recorded quite a few of them) and their
> relationship to the blues lyrics
> of, for instance, the folks above, or John Lee Hooker, Big Mama
> Thornton, Ma Rainey, etc---
>
> And if anybody else here would maybe be interested in talking about
> that relationship here--
> Does it matter that Hughes worked primarily in a different field (in
> the artistic specialization sense) than these other folks?
> Is it somewhat analogous to the difference between, say, million
> selling hip hop artists today vs. a slam poet aesthetic which
> utilizes many devices of rap/hip hop?
> Or, for that matter, even the difference between say Bob Dylan and
> Allen Ginsberg's songs?
>
> There's alot of room for discussion (and, sure, bring on the "blues
> bashers" though I'm definitely trying to
> avoid the tired argument "it doesn't stand up on the page" and will
> try not to engage it here if it comes up)--
> Also, if anybody knows of any good essays on the subject----
> specifically about Hughes and some of the other recorded bluesmen of
> the 20th C---that'd be a nice supplement, but I really am not a big
> fan of posts that just send LINKS
> without any commentary as to why I'm supposed