(PP. 80-86) Literature Section IV: "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes → "The Ten Commandments of Charm" by Zora Neale Hurston (ACADEC '25-'26)

What writer are few writers as synonymous in the public imagination with a specific literary movement as?

Langston Hughes with the Harlem Renaissance

What was Langston Hughes’s lifespan?

1901-67

What were Langston Hughes’s nicknames?

“Shakespeare of Harlem” and “Poet Laureate of the Negro Race”

Who was a monumental figure in the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro Movement and participated in various other social and artistic movements?

Langston Hughes

Where was Langston Hughes born?

Joplin, Missouri

When did Hughes first arrive in Harlem, New York?

1922

What did Langston Hughes immediately begin doing when arriving in Harlem, New York?

Shaping the emerging aesthetic of what came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance

What is Hughes’s first published collection of poetry?

The Weary Blues

When was The Weary Blues released?

1926

How old was Langston Hughes when he published his first collection of poetry?

24 years old

What mediums did Langston Hughes continue to write throughout his career?

Volumes of poetry, two autobiographies, a novel, and several collections of short fiction, as well as numerous plays, librettos, essays, liner notes, and stories and histories for children

How many autobiographies did Langston Hughes write?

2 autobiographies

What did Hughes’s writing often focus on?

Everyday people rather than grand, romantic subjects

What was the project of poetry and art in general, for Hughes?

To amplify the voices of everyday people—Black voices in particular—that were, as described in perhaps his most famous poem “I, Too,” sent “to eat in the kitchen/when company comes”

What was Langston Hughes’s most famous poem?

“I, Too,”

What was Hughes most famously associated with, besides Harlem?

A world traveler and dedicated political activist, forging connections between writers and thinkers interested in racial justice across the globe

What did Hughes’s travel to Mexico inspire?

Poems like “In a Mexican City” and “Mexican Market Woman”

What is the premise of “Mexican Market Woman”?

In a move typical of much of Hughes’s poetry, he challenges readers to see beyond their prejudices about “common” people

What is the content of “Mexican Market Woman”?

“This ancient hag /

Who sits upon the ground /

Selling her scanty wares /

Day in, day round /

Has known high wind-swept mountains /

And the sun has made /

Her skin so brown”

In “Mexican Market Woman,” what is the woman doing?

She sits upon the ground selling her wares, day in, day round

How is the hag described in “Mexican Market Woman”?

Ancient

What has the woman in “Mexican Market Woman” known?

High wind-swept mountains

In “Mexican Market Woman,” what has made the woman’s skin so brown?

The sun

What did Langston Hughes become more interested in as he grew older and more famous?

Traveling to countries that differed from the U.S. in their approach to racial justice

Who called Langston Hughes’s voyage “an international odyssey that coincided with a leftward shift in his political consciousness”?

Philip Kaisary

Where did Hughes travel as he grew older?

Haiti, Cuba, Soviet Union, and eventually West Africa

What did Hughes encounter during his journey?

Radical forms of social solidarity that inspired him politically and energized him creatively

What was Hughes by at the end of his life?

He was a widely respected “elder statesman,” serving as mentor and leader to new generations of writers that, despite occasional clashes about artistic or political strategies, still viewed him as an invaluable resource due to his global perspective

What is Hughes widely credited with popularizing, while not being the first to include it in his poetry?

The use of blues and jazz structures in his writing

What were 2 of Hughes’s interests in the musical forms of blues and jazz structures?

First, they provided him with new formal structures that afforded innovative artistic approaches; second, Hughes viewed these musical idioms as crucial tools for grounding Black artistic expression in the everyday experiences of average Black citizens across the country and indeed across the world

What was a language everyone spoke for Langston Hughes?

Music

What reflected the language of music for Hughes?

Art, especially poetr

What was the relationship between music and influence?

The more art, especially poetry, reflected the language of music, the more influential it could be

Who wrote the essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”?

Langston Hughes

When was “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”?

1926

What did Hughes argue in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”?

Only by incorporating the sounds and genres that people experienced everyday could art truly make an impact on the world

What did “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” explicitly say?

“Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand”

What does Hughes's continued popularity testify?

In part how successful he was at finding ways to make his poetry accessible and resonant to a wide range of readers

When was “The Weary Blues” released?

1926

Who created “The Weary Blues”?

Langston Hughes

In “The Weary Blues,” what was a ‘Negro’ doing?

“Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, /

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon”

In “The Weary Blues,” where did the African-American do “a lazy sway… To the tune o’ those Weary Blues”?

“Down on Lenox Avenue the other night /

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light”

In “The Weary Blues,” how did the African-American make “that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues!”?

“With his ebony hands on each ivory key”

In “The Weary Blues,” what did the African-American do as he swayed “to and fro on his rickety stool”?

“He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool /

Sweet Blues!”

In “The Weary Blues,” what kind of voice and tone did the African-American have?

“A deep song voice with a melancholy tone”

In “The Weary Blues,” what explicitly did the African-American sing?

“Ain’t god nobody in all this world, /

Ain’t got nobody but ma self. /

I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ /

And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

In “The Weary Blues,” what sound did the African-American’s foot make on the floor?

“Thump, thump, thump”

In “The Weary Blues,” what did the man explicitly sing after the he “played a few chords then he sang some more—”?

“I got the Weary Blues /

And 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.”

In “The Weary Blues,” what happened as the man “crooned that tune” into the night?

“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.”

What does “The Weary Blues” take as its subject and its guiding formal principle?

The blues

What is “The Weary Blues” about?

What it sounds and feels like to experience someone playing the blues in a nightclub or music hall; but its also trying to approximate some of the same patterns and emotions that define the blues as a musical genre

How does Hughes establish what it sounds like and feels like to experience someone playing the blues in a nightclub or music hall in “The Weary Blues”?

He locates the poem directly in Harlem, specifically a “distinctly unglamorous Lenox Avenue bar, a meeting place for working class people”

How is the location of Lenox Avenue bar deliberate in “The Weary Blues”?

The blues isn’t played in grand concert halls or in beautiful museums, but rather, at least in its earliest performances before it emerged as a nationally popular musical style, in ordinary spaces

In “The Weary Blues,” what does the power of the blues reside in?

Its ability to make even the “pale dull pallor of an old gas light” a space where transformative aesthetic experiences can occur

What does “The Weary Blues” seek to recreate?

The blues performance through a direct quotation to the speaker, including the singer’s repetition of life’s problems in the second stanza (“And I can’t be satisfied…And can’t be satisfied…And I wish that I had died”)

What does the singer’s repetition of life’s problems in the second stanza in “The Weary Blues” have the effect of?

Providing the reader with the singer’s own words, as well as recreating the musical structure of a blues song, which typically features a chorus that repeats a series of tribulations or sorrows

What is “The Weary Blues” an active presentation of?

The performance rather than just a description of it

What does “The Weary Blues” do, just as it details the structure of the blues song?

It recreates the texture of the music

What does the poem “The Weary Blues” feature, much like the song”?

“Drowsy syncopated” rhythm, or a meter that occasionally slips out of an ordered pattern in order to elicit a listener’s attention

What lines in “The Weary Blues” use pauses and silences?

6 and 7, where the words trail off, capturing the haunting, silent movements of the singer: “He did a lazy sway…/He did a lazy sway…”

The blues is often as much about what goes unsaid as what?

Is actually said

What song, like the song in the poem “The Weary Blues,” prominently feature moans and whispers?

“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson

Who sung “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground”?

Blind Willie Johnson

What is discussed as a way to represent the content of blues music in “The Weary Blues”?

The poem’s quotation of the singer

What does the poem’s quotation of the singer also perform?

A formal function; it equalizes the language of the poem and the vernacular language of the blues

What is vernacular language?

The ordinary, nonliterary words and phrases

What does Hughes underscore by the poem’s quotation of the singer performing a formal function?

The meaningful artistic methods found in the common “folk” practices of everyday people

What did Cheryl A. Wall say about “The Weary Blues”?

The poem is in fact the first time that “the unmediated blues voice was heard in American poetry”

In the world of “The Weary Blues,” what is there no?

Artistic hierarchy; the singer’s performance and the poet’s recounting of it are equally important, and they accordingly share fundamental structural and linguistic patterns. Poetry is elevated into the blues as much as the blues is elevated into poetry

What was Zora Neale Hurston’s lifespan?

1891-1960

What is Zora Neale Hurston most widely known today for?

Her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God

Who created Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Zora Neale Hurston

When was “Their Eyes Were Watching God” created?

1937

By what decade was Zora Neale Hurston nearly forgotten?

The 1940s

In what decade did scholars, particularly Black feminist writers, work to reemphasize Hurston’s accomplishments, highlighting the insights not only of her fiction, but also of her nonfiction?

The 1970s

What happened to Zora Neale Hurston’s perception in the 1970s?

Scholars, particularly Black feminist writers, work to reemphasize Hurston’s accomplishments, highlighting the insights not only of her fiction, but also of her nonfiction

What is Their Eyes Were Watching God now considered?

A classic of American literature

When was Zora Neale Hurston’s most recent publication of essays released?

2022

What collection of Zora Neale Hurston’s essays were published in 2022?

You Don’t Know Us Negroes

What does “You Don’t Know Us Negroes” cover?

A wide range of topics, reflecting Hurston’s wide range of interests

Where was Zora Neale Hurston born?

Alabama

When was Zora Neale Hurston born?

1891

What universities did Zora Neale Hurston attend?

Howard University and eventually Barnard College

What happened in Zora Neale Hurston’s time in univeristy?

It was during her time as a student in university that she would eventually become associated with the cultural movement that would eventually become the Harlem Renaissance

How did Zora Neale Hurston first come to prominence?

Writing for popular magazines like Negro World, The Messenger, and Charles Johnson’s influential Opportunity

What are examples of Zora Neale Hurston being involved with nearly all the major figures and groups of the Harlem Renaissance?

She was friends with Langston Hughes, contributed to her former professor Alain Locke’s The New Negro, and would often attend the literary parties hosted by Georgia Douglas Johnson

When was The New Negro released?

1925

What was Georgia Douglas Johnson, in addition to writing essays, criticism, and fiction?

She was a folklorist, anthropologist, and linguist

What did Hurston do as the Harlem Renaissance surged in popularity in the mid-1920s?

She traveled to Florida to conduct field research

What did Zora Neale Hurston spend several years in Florida doing?

Observing, interviewing, and exploring folk customs and rituals, unique idiomatic languages, and the spiritual and cultural practices of rural and Southern populations

What did Hurston consider her anthropological work to be?

Her true passion, as it explicitly contradicted belittling accounts of white anthropologists who saw only barbarism and backwardness in such customs and practices or who promoted racist pseudoscientific theories (such as those described by Tom Buchanan in TGG)

What did Hurston believe, like many other members of the New Negro Movement and the Harlem Renaissance?

The key to racial justice involved a respect for and investiment in Affrican-American folk cultures

What did Hurston often disagree with her peers about?

The importance of their work; for her, recording African-American folklore was not one part of the struggle, it was only the fight that mattered

What would occasionally alienate Hurston from other writers?

The intensity of Hurston’s commitment to her belief that it was only the fight that mattered

What did Lawrence P. Jackson say about Hurston?

“Hurston believed her real battle was outwitting the racially mixed elites (of whom she was a part) who she believed had strangled the appearance of undiluted black music, lyric, dance, and folk narrative…To Hurston, the battlefield of cultural purity mattered, perhaps even more than the fight against white racism”

Who was one of Hurston’s fiercest critics?

The novelist Richard Wright

What did Richard Wright believe about Hurston?

Her emphasis on folk traditions rather than on contemporary political crises risked reinforcing racist stereotypes that viewed African Americans as fundamentally backward and simple

What did Hurston believe about folk traditions?

It was only through careful attention to those traditions that an authentic and fully inclusive racial consciousness could be developed, and such a consciousness was, to her, a prerequisite for political change

For Hurston, when could authentic progress occur?

When all people were honored

What did Hurston’s commitment to honoring the authentic expressions and practices of others enable her to produce?

Works of folklore and anthropology that are still widely read and analyzed today