This will be a short post. The last day here has not been a good day for thinking of this project and my planned series from Langston Hughes’ first book The Weary Blues. I’d intended to do a version of that book’s title poem, I’d even begun to collect some ideas in my head: different … Continue reading The Weary Blues (demo version)
This month I’ve been doing a series of pieces based on poems from Langston Hughes’ first book-length collection The Weary Blues of 1926 — but maybe it’s time to mention that I have already presented two early pieces that were included in that book. Here’s Hughes “Dream Variation” which also offered its title to a … Continue reading More from Langston Hughes’ “The Weary Blues”
Today’s piece, “Poem” from Langston Hughes 1926 poetry collection, The Weary Blues, is one of the shortest poems in that book. Here’s a link to the text, all of it, if you’d like to read along. Those who’ve followed this Project as it has looked at early English language Modernist verse may recall that very … Continue reading Langston Hughes’ Poem
It’s Black History Month, and I’m planning on presenting a series focusing on Langston Hughes’ first poetry collection: The Weary Blues — but before we get to today’s new Hughes’ piece, let me briefly set down a few reasons for why Langston Hughes. This project presents early Modernist poets most often. From the American predecessors … Continue reading To Midnight Nan at Leroy’s
I’ll promise you a love song at the end of this, but let’s look briefly at some other stuff that surrounds that song. As I look in the Langston Hughes poetry collection I’m featuring this Black History Month for a Valentine’s Day piece, there is less to pick from than one might imagine. Even though … Continue reading Song to the Dark Virgin
Here’s another early Langston Hughes poem from The Weary Blues, his collection which I’ve chosen to focus on during this Black History Month. Given Hughes’ esteemed position as part of the Harlem Renaissance and the long career that followed, it may be hard to remember that this is a poem by a young man, less … Continue reading Lenox Avenue: Midnight, an extension
Given the everything I’d rate between losses, troubles, and mere distractions I’ve gone through since late last autumn, I’m not in a mood this week to do the traditional Parlando Top Ten list for the past season. These are the same issues in repertory that have reduced the number of new pieces I was able … Continue reading Winter 2020-21 Parlando Top Ten (abbreviated edition)
The end of U. S. National Poetry Month is approaching and there are things I meant to get done (and didn’t) this year, but the last day of April is also International Jazz Day, and I can’t let that go by without a piece to celebrate. Poetry Month and Jazz Day — shouldn’t that be … Continue reading Jazzonia: May Music Find a Way on International Jazz Day
This Friday is International Jazz Day, and for a project that subtitles itself “Where Music and Words Meet,” it’s a little odd that I talk less about the musical half of what we do. My project assumes that poetry, even on the page, can be defined as words that want to sing. What manner of … Continue reading Jazz Fantasia, a pioneering work of Jazz Poetry
Frank Hudson 