MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 03037cam a2200385 i 4500
001 2014043213
003 DLC
005 20150922081026.0
008 141201t20151926nyu 000 0 eng
010 $a 2014043213
020 $a9780385352970 (hardcover)
020 $z9780385352987 (ebook)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda$dDLC
042 $apcc
050 00 $aPS3515.U274$bA6 2015
082 00 $a811/.52$223
084 $aPOE000000$aPOE005050$aPOE005010$2bisacsh
100 1 $aHughes, Langston,$d1902-1967
240 10 $aPoems.$kSelections
245 14 $aThe weary blues /$cLangston Hughes ; introduction by Carl Van Vechten ; with a new foreword by Kevin Young.
250 $aSecond Edition.
264 1 $aNew York :$bAlfred A. Knopf,$c2015.
264 4 $c©1926
300 $a91 pages ;$c20 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
520 $a"Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem)--"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"--Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature. As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race. Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with precocious confidence and clarity. In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young suggests that Hughes from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing, and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it. We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America," but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as deeply. "Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers / Of the world.""--$cProvided by publisher.
520 $a"Reprint of Langston Hughes' book of poems The Weary Blues with a new introduction by the poet Kevin Young"--$cProvided by publisher.
650 7 $aPOETRY / General.$2bisacsh
650 7 $aPOETRY / American / African American.$2bisacsh
650 7 $aPOETRY / American / General.$2bisacsh
700 1 $aVan Vechten, Carl,$d1880-1964.
700 1 $aYoung, Kevin.
856 42 $3Cover image$u9780385352970.jpg