Modernist Biography

Related Schools & Movements 

• Harlem Renaissance 

• Jazz Poetry 

Books by this Poet 

• The Weary Blues 

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1,1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, due to the fact that his parents divorced. His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself. After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Langston Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. His funeral little in the way of spoken eulogy, but filled with jazz and blues music. 

Dream Keeper

  

Modernist Quote

"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby." 

- Langston Hughes 

Quote by Langston Hughes

"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes

 Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

     I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

      He did a lazy sway. . . .

      He did a lazy sway. . . .

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

      O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

      Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man’s soul.

      O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—

      “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

      Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

      I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

      And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more—

      “I got the Weary Blues

      And I can’t be satisfied.

      Got the Weary Blues

      And can’t be satisfied—

      I ain’t happy no mo’

      And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.