num_pages: 128
description: A beautiful new edition of this beloved poet's first collection originally published in 1926 when he was just twenty-four. From the opening Proem (prologue poem) he offers in this first book-I am a Negro: / Black as night is black / Black the depths of my Africa-Hughes spoke directly intimately and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As his Knopf editor Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 volume illuminating the potential of this promising young voice His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race...Always however his stanzas are subjective personal and he concludes they are the expression [of] an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature. That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself sometimes with shocking confidence and clarity: Bring me all of your / Heart melodies / That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers/ Of the world.
language: English
title: The Weary Blues
publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; 10th Printing edition (1945)