From the Inside Flap
Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes was the first to popularize the blues as a poetic form. According to Hughes, the blues were born as poetry, sung by working men to share their stories of hard-luck lives and tough times. Their tales had a natural rhythm that begged for a beat, and musical blues was born. Today, “poetry over music” scenes across the country recall Hughes’s legacy. California Poet Laureate Al Young carries on that legacy in Something About the Blues, with 120 new and previously published poems that evoke the blues in stories about life and music.
The blues come to life on the enclosed audio CD:
--Nearly an hour of Al Young’s dynamic storytelling readings
--Langston Hughes reads his inspirational “The Weary Blues”
--Many of Al Young’s performances feature a live band
San Francisco Bay Area based poet-novelist-essayist Al Young was named Poet Laureate of California in 2005, and is the author of more than 20 books. Among his honors: Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA Fellowships, The Joseph Henry Jackson Award, Stanford’s Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Award for Poetry and the 2007 Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award. Young’s titles include Heaven: Collected Poems 1956–1990; The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990–2000; Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons : Poems 2001–2006; Mingus Mingus: Two Memoirs (with Janet Coleman); Drowning in the Sea of Love: Musical Memoirs; African American Literature : A Brief Introduction and Anthology; and the novels Snakes, Who Is Angelina?, Seduction by Light and Sitting Pretty.
From the Back Cover
All combined, these wayward pages say something about the blues.
Beaded and threaded throughout America’s musical mosaic, the blues make you feel and hear. Sometimes you can count them off in measures and beats, but largely they dwell in a feral state; blues truth is wild and menacing. Like poetry, the blues will always be dramatically unpredictable, sometimes torturous and sometimes pleasurable.
In these 120 poems and audio CD you'll find:
--Weary travelers longing and looking for peace and quiet
--Yo-Yo Ma on a kids’ TV show
--An elevator reeking of hard living
--Elvis trying to buy enlightenment
--Politicians and citizens scrambling for answers
--A frantic search for a lost passport
--“The Weary Blues” on Lenox Avenue read by Langston Hughes
Al Young, California's Poet Laureate, has sung and played the blues, drawn inspiration from the blues and incorporated the blues and blues stylings into his poetry. His poetic stories ooze with unvarnished real life. Appropriate for a book about the blues, many of Al’s dynamic, soulful readings are backed by a live band on the included audio CD.
