Something About the Blues (A Poetry Speaks Experience) - Hardcover

Young, Al

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402210647 ISBN 13: 9781402210648

Publisher: Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2007

Synopsis

Like Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes, who first popularized the blues as a poetic form, California Poet Laureate Al Young has written about the blues, played the blues and drawn inspiration from the blues.

Something About the Blues uses the blues as a theme throughout 100 new and previously-published poems. Selections evoke the cold, hard city, love gone wrong and blues music itself, with tributes to Ma Rainey, Lena Horne and other notable performers.

Something About the Blues includes an audio CD with Al Young's dynamic, soulful readings of more than 20 of the poems from the book, plus Langston Hughes' reading of his classic "The Weary Blues." Many of Young's performances feature a live blues band.

About this title

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, ìpoetry over musicî scenes across the country recall Hughesís 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 Youngís dynamic storytelling readings
--Langston Hughes reads his inspirational ìThe Weary Bluesî
--Many of Al Youngís 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, Stanfordís Wallace Stegner Writing Fellowship, the Stephen Henderson Award for Poetry and the 2007 Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award. Youngís titles include Heaven: Collected Poems 1956ñ1990; The Sound of Dreams Remembered: Poems 1990ñ2000; Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons : Poems 2001ñ2006; 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sourcebooks MediaFusion
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1402210647
• ISBN 13: 9781402210648
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224