Langston Hughes' Weary Blues
Cheryl A. Wall's recent book "The Harlem Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction" (2016) inspired me to revisit the poetry of Langston Hughes. I had read collections of Hughes' poems some time ago but was largely familiar with him through his under-appreciated autobiographical novel, "Not Without Laughter". As luck would have it I found this new edition of Hughes' "The Weary Blues" in the public library. The volume is even shorter that Wall's book that I read in the "Very Short Introductions" series.
"The Weary Blues" (1926) was Hughes' (1902 -- 1967) first published book of poetry and is the work of a young man of twenty-three. Carl Van Vechten's introduction to the volume gives a sense of Hughes' early life: he had been academically successful, and had wandered in the states before shipping off to sea and ultimately spending time in Europe. He already had many life experiences which he reflected in his poetry. Hughes worked briefly in Washington, D.C. as a busboy before moving to Harlem where he lived for most of his life. There is a Washington D.C. restaurant and bookstore known as "Busboys and Poets" named after Hughes which I frequent. It is difficult not to think of Hughes while visiting the establishment.
The book is beautiful, lucid, musical and highly personal collection which captures the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance between the two world wars. Hughes writes with feeling and a sense of pride in himself and in African Americans for their past and their potential. The famous title poem for the volume sings of an aging black blues singer playing the piano "coming from a black man's soul" in a Harlem club. Blues rhythm and blues feeling often are used in these poems and in Hughes' later work..
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied--
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died". .
Some of the poems address Hughes' own experience and aspirations and the joy and promise of life. The fear of death and of the passing of joy and sexuality are never far away. The collection includes love poems such as "When Sue Wears Red." The section of the book titled "Water-Front Streets" describes some of his experiences at sea. Many of the poems describe people in Harlem, including jazz musicians in clubs and on the street,, beggars, lonely women, rakes, dancers, and prostitutes. Hughes shows the ability to capture a person or situation in a few words, as in the poem, "Young Prostitute":
"Her dark brown face
Is like a withered flower
On a broken stem.
These kind come cheap in Harlem"
The poems reflecting upon the black experience are among the most famous in "Weary Blues". They include "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" which Hughes wrote at the age of 19 and read when he met W.E.B. Bubois. The poem "Mother to Son" speaks of fortitude and the need to carry on as the aging mother exhorts her son to keep trying in life and reminds him "And life for me ain't been no crystal stair." In the final poem of the collection, the "Epilogue" Hughes writes of African Americans that "I ,too, sing America" as the speaker seeks better days, freedom, and the end of race prejudice. The poems in the book speak of African American pride and experience but they are universal in scope as well.
It was valuable to read this short collection of Hughes' first published poetry rather than an anthology. It allowed me to focus on works in the way they were first presented rather than reading them quickly in a larger anthology. The small volume with Van Vechten's introduction and the original cover art by Miguel Covarrurubias of the bluesman at the piano made me feel that I was somehow holding the volume in my hands in a Harlem café of the mid 1920s.
Robin Friedman
