Blues Poems [Hardcover]

Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power.

The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters.

The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.Foreword

STANDARDS (Blues Poems before World War II)
LANGSTON HUGHES The Weary Blues
LANGSTON HUGHES Morning After
LANGSTON HUGHES Beale Street Love
LANGSTON HUGHES Song for a Dark Girl
LANGSTON HUGHES Midwinter Blues
LANGSTON HUGHES Too Blue
LANGSTON HUGHES Note on Commercial Theatre 26
FENTON JOHNSON Tired
CLAUDE MCKAY The Harlem Dancer
NANCY CUNARD Memory Blues
COUNTEE CULLEN Colored Blues Singer
STERLING BROWN Ma Rainey
STERLING BROWN Choices
NICOLÁS GUILLÉN High Brown
MELVIN B. TOLSON Sootie Joe
MAXWELL BODENHEIM Street-level Jazz
W. H. AUDEN Blues
W. H. AUDEN Funeral Blues
MURIEL RUKEYSER George Robinson: Blues
LEOPOLD SENGHOR Ndéssé, or&#l#&