Poetry by Langston Hughes - The Weary Blues

Poetry by Langston Hughes - The Weary Blues


Notes from YouTube; One of 25 video poems in Four Seasons Productions upcoming Moving Poetry Series - Three innovative new films - RANT * RAVE * RIFF. The Weary Blues was written by Langston Hughes in 1923 and recited in our film by author and Harvard Professor Dr. Allen Dwight Callahan. Learn more about this provocative new series, featured poems, poets and readers at www.4SeasonsProductions.com.

Allen Ginsberg at megatripolis reading Hum Bom

Notes from YouTube; Allen Ginsberg - at megatripolis UK reading his poem 'Hum Bom!' on October 19 1995, HEAVEN nightclub, London. Shot by Steve Teers, Diva Pictures (www.divapix.co.uk).

This clip was Mr Ginsberg's final public stage reading in the UK at the megatripolis underground club-night which ran in London between 1993-96. At the reading was an audience of about 1000 people. There was also a Q + A session later in the club.

More clips at www.allenginsbergdvd.com and www.myspace.com/allenginsbergliveinlondo . A memorable, brilliant night. Many thanks Tom Pickard, poet, Lee Harris, crew. This clip taken from the DVD 'Allen Ginsberg Live in London ' a film made of that evening.

Allen Ginsberg at megatripolis

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Daddy'

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Daddy'

An Answer To Mr. Williams

I've never needed a red wheelbarrow,
no mater how glazed with rain water,
and we only had one white chicken.

But now a blue sky,
all things great and small
depend on a bright blue sky.


P.S. Just trying to work that whole red, white and blue thing.

P.P.S. Oh, and the chicken, tasted like chicken, of course.




By Fitzgerald used with the permission of the poet.
All rights reserved

file under;
poetry, writing, literature,

Def Poetry - Oscar Brown Jr. - This Beach

Oscar Brown Jr. recites his poem, "This Beach" Def Poetry Jam Season 5, Episode 8

Charles Bukowski "Bluebird."

In this video the Poet Charles Bukowski reads his poem "Bluebird." I really like it because it shows what a sensitive man he was. And how even in the end he had to keep up appearances as a tough guy.

But would a tough guy write this? The pictures that accompany this video are also well selected.









There's No Business by Charles Bukowski Poster
Crumb, Robert
Buy at AllPosters.com

Sweet Talk -- Billy Collins

Notes from YouTube - The poet's witty ploy to get a Bohemian to sleep with him. Maybe a little art and some absinthe is all he needs?

This poem is reminiscent of Andrew Marvel's 17th century poem, "To His Coy Mistress", in which he coaxes a reluctant woman to sleep with him.

The Birthday Of Langston Hughes

It's the birthday of poet and novelist Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri (1902). His father divorced his mother and moved to Mexico when Hughes was just a baby. He was raised by his mother and grandmother, but after high school he went to Mexico to get to know his father for the first time. He was disgusted when he found that his father was obsessed with money and more racist than most white men Hughes had ever known.

He went to Columbia University for a year, but then he decided that he wanted to learn from the world rather than books. He quit college, hopped a boat to Africa, and as soon as the boat left New York Harbor, he threw all his college books overboard. He took odd jobs on ships and made his way from Africa to France, Holland, Italy, and finally back to the United States.

He got a job working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel, and one day he left three poems he had written next to the plate of the poet Vachel Lindsey. Lindsey loved them and read them to an audience the very next day. Within a few years, Hughes had published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926).

He got involved in the Harlem Renaissance and started to write poetry influenced by the music he heard in jazz and blues clubs. He said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street... [songs that] had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going."

Hughes was one of the first African-American poets to embrace the language of lower-class black Americans. In his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), he said, "[I want to write for] the people who have their nip of gin on Saturday nights and are not too important to themselves or the community, or too well fed, or too learned to watch the lazy world go round."

In his poem "Laughers," he made a list of what he called "my people": "Dish-washers, / Elevator boys, / Ladies' maids, / Crap-shooters, / Cooks, / Waiters, / Jazzers, / Nurses of Babies, / Loaders of Ships, /Rounders,/ Number writers, / Comedians in Vaudeville / And band-men in circuses - / Dream-singers all."