#the collected poems of langston hughes
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A Black Pierrot
I am a black Pierrot:
She did not love me,
So I crept away into the night
And the night was black, too.
I am a black Pierrot:
She did not love me,
So I wept until the dawn
Dripped blood over the eastern hills
And my heart was bleeding, too.
I am a black Pierrot:
She did not love me,
So with my once gay-colored soul
Shrunken like a balloon without air,
I went forth in the morning
To seek a new brown love.
— Langston Hughes, Collected Poems (1994)
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Thanx for tagging me, @fiercynn!
last song or podcast listened to: I was writing dialogue about betrayal in a friendship and listened to Glitterbomb by Incubus to amplify the mood.
currently reading: Interestingly enough, I'm also reading about the caste system. Caste by Isabel Wilkerson was on my list to read after she was featured on the Why is This Happening podcast and I'm finally getting around to it (after, like, 2+ years). It talks about the Indian, Nazi, and American caste systems. I've only just started it, but I'm looking forward to the part where it delves into how the Nazi's modeled many of their systems after things they learned about how racism worked in America and how the Nazi's thought that this great nation's government went too far.
currently watching: Tumblr…
current obsession: Serialized storytelling on Tumblr. Many moons ago (2016) I wrote a guide for webcomic artists about the basics of managing a webcomic on Tumblr from a reader's perspective. When I came off of social media hiatus, I stepped into simblr and I've seen a lot of the same things that prompted me to write the webcomic guide, so I'm trying to decide if I want to revise it for a different storytelling medium and for a Tumblr that has changed a bit from back then.
tagging @transdimensional-void, @beebiesims, and @arianwells + anyone that owns a book that includes "the collected poems of" in the title. Feel free to tag me and put the title of the book in the tags.
[blank template under the cut] I added podcast because some of my moots are more likely to have an answer for that than for last song.
last song or podcast listened to:
currently reading:
currently watching:
current obsession:
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Langston Hughes ~ Mother to Son
#alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry#poem#poetry#poems#poet#poets#anthology#tumblr poetry#poetry blog#poetry corner#poem of the day#literature#love#tumblr poem#tumblr poems#poetry collection#poem collection#Langston hughes#mother to son#Crystal stair#carpet#floor#book worm#honey#mother#stair#crystals
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Queer poetry? Both modern and historical please!!
Queer poets from history to look into:
Yona Wallach
Ifti Nasim
Langston Hughes
Assotto Saint
Anderson Bigode Herzer
Yosano Akiko
Sappho
tatiana de la tierra
Walt Whitman
Sophia Parnok
György Faludy
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Modern poetry books to check out:
I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World Kai Cheng Thom
God Themselves Jae Nichelle
IRL Tommy Pico
Homie: Poems Danez Smith
Sacrament of Bodies Romeo Oriogun
Disintegrate/Dissociate Arielle Twist
I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry Halsey
Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color Christopher Soto
#queer history#queer#lgbt#lgbt history#gay history#lesbian history#transgender history#answered#transgender#making queer history#queer books#queer book#lgbt books#queer poetry#lgbt poetry
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what are your suggestions for starter poetry for people who dont have strong reading/analysis backgrounds
I've answered this a few times so I'm going to compile and expand them all into one post here.
I think if you haven't read much poetry before or aren't sure of your own tastes yet, then poetry anthologies are a great place to start: many of them will have a unifying theme so you can hone in based on a subject that interests you, or pick your way through something more general. I haven't read all of the ones below, but I have read most of them; the rest I came across in my own readings and added to my list either because I like the concept or am familiar with the editor(s) / their work:
Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times (ed. Nick Astley) & Being Alive: The Sequel to Staying Alive (there's two more books in this series, but I'm recommending these two just because it's where I started)
The Rattlebag (ed. Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes)
The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (ed. Ilya Kaminsky & Susan Harris)
The Essential Haiku, Versions of Basho, Buson and Issa (ed. Robert Hass)
A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czesław Miłosz )
Now and Then: The Poet's Choice Columns by Robert Hass (this may be a good place to start if you're also looking for commentary on the poems themselves)
Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World(ed. Pádraig Ó'Tuama)
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (ed. Kevin Young)
The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing (ed. Kevin Young)
Lifelines: Letters from Famous People about their Favourite Poems
The following lists are authors I love in one regard or another and is a small mix of different styles / time periods which I think are still fairly accessible regardless of what your reading background is! It's be no means exhaustice but hopefully it gives you even just a small glimpse of the range that's available so you can branch off and explore for yourself if any particular work speaks to you.
But in any case, for individual collections, I would try:
anything by Sara Teasdale
Devotions / Wild Geese / Felicity by Mary Oliver
Selected Poems and Prose by Christina Rossetti
Collected Poems by Langston Hughes
Where the Sidewalk Endsby Shel Silverstein
Morning Haiku by Sonia Sanchez
Revolutionary Letters, Diane di Prima
Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr
Rose: Poems by Li-Young Lee
A Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor / Barefoot Souls by Maram al-Masri
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Tell Me: Poems / What is This Thing Called Love? by Kim Addonizio
The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins (Billy Collins is THE go-to for accessible / beginner poetry in my view so I think any of his collections would probably do)
Crush by Richard Siken
Rapture / The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail
Selected Poems by Walt Whitman
View with a Grain of Sand by Wislawa Szymborska
Collected Poems by Vasko Popa
Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas (this is a play, but Thomas is a poet and the language & structure is definitely poetic to me)
Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón
Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire,
Nostalgia, My Enemy: Selected Poems by Saadi Youssef
As for individual poems:
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
[Dear The Vatican] erasure poem by Pádraig Ó'Tuama // "The Pedagogy of Conflict"
"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith
"The Author Writes the First Draft of His Weddings Vows (An erasure of Virginia Woolf's suicide letter to her husband, Leonard)" by Hanif Abdurraqib
"I Can Tell You a Story" by Chuck Carlise
"The Sciences Sing a Lullabye" by Albert Goldbarth
"One Last Poem for Richard" by Sandra Cisneros
"We Lived Happily During the War" by Ilya Kaminsky
“I’m Explaining a Few Things”by Pablo Neruda
"Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" //"Nothing Gold Can Stay"//"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost
"Tablets: I // II // III"by Dunya Mikhail
"What Were They Like?" by Denise Levertov
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden,
"The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider
“I, too” // "The Negro Speaks of Rivers” // "Harlem” // “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes
“The Mower” // "The Trees" // "High Windows" by Philip Larkin
“The Leash” // “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” // "Downhearted" by Ada Limón
“The Flea” by John Donne
"The Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore
"Beauty" // "Please don't" // "How it Adds Up" by Tony Hoagland
“My Friend Yeshi” by Alice Walker
"De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"byJohn Burnside
“What Do Women Want?” // “For Desire” // "Stolen Moments" // "The Numbers" by Kim Addonizio
“Hummingbird” // "For Tess" by Raymond Carver
"The Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin
“Bleecker Street, Summer” by Derek Walcott
“Dirge Without Music” // "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Digging” // “Mid-Term Break” // “The Rain Stick” // "Blackberry Picking" // "Twice Shy" by Seamus Heaney
“Dulce Et Decorum Est”by Wilfred Owen
“Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition”by Wislawa Szymborska
"Hour" //"Medusa" byCarol Ann Duffy
“The More Loving One” // “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden
“Small Kindnesses” // "Feeding the Worms" by Danusha Laméris
"Down by the Salley Gardens” // “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats
"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass
"The Last Love Letter from an Entymologist" by Jared Singer
"[i like my body when it is with your]" by e.e. cummings
"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski
"The Cinnamon Peeler" by Michael Ondaatje
"Last Night I Dreamed I Made Myself" by Paige Lewis
"A Dream Within a Dream" // "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (highly recommend reading the last one out loud or listening to it recited)
"Ars Poetica?" // "Encounter" // "A Song on the End of the World"by Czeslaw Milosz
"Wandering Around an Albequerque Airport Terminal” // "Two Countries” // "Kindness” by Naoimi Shihab Nye
"Slow Dance” by Matthew Dickman
"The Archipelago of Kisses" // "The Quiet World" by Jeffrey McDaniel
"Mimesis" by Fady Joudah
"The Great Fires" // "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" // "Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert
"The Mermaid" // "Virtuosi" by Lisel Mueller
"Macrophobia (Fear of Waiting)" by Jamaal May
"Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong
"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou
I would also recommend spending some times with essays, interviews, or other non-fiction, creative or otherwise (especially by other poets) if you want to broaden and improve how you read poetry; they can help give you a wider idea of the landscape behind and beyond the actual poems themselves, or even just let you acquaint yourself with how particular writers see and describe things in the world around them. The following are some of my favourites:
Upstream: Essays by Mary Oliver
"Theory and Play of the Duende" by Federico García Lorca
"The White Bird" and "Some Notes on Song" by John Berger
In That Great River: A Notebook by Anna Kamienska
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
"Of Strangeness That Wakes Us" and "Still Dancing: An Interview with Ilya Kaminsky" by Ilya Kaminsky
"The Sentence is a Lonely Place" by Garielle Lutz
Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty
Paris, When It's Naked by Etel Adnan
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Public Domain Black History Books
For the day Frederick Douglass celebrated as his birthday (February 14, Douglass Day, and the reason February is Black History Month), here's a selection of historical books by Black authors covering various aspects of Black history (mostly in the US) that you can download For Free, Legally And Easily!
Slave Narratives
This comprised a hugely influential genre of Black writing throughout the 1800s - memoirs of people born (or kidnapped) into slavery, their experiences, and their escapes. These were often published to fuel the abolitionist movement against slavery in the 1820s-1860s and are graphic and uncompromising about the horrors of slavery, the redemptive power of literacy, and the importance of abolitionist support.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - 1845 - one of the most iconic autobiographies of the 1800s, covering his early life when he was enslaved in Maryland, and his escape to Massachusetts where he became a leading figure in the abolition movement.
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft - 1860 - the memoir of a married couple's escape from slavery in Georgia, to Philadelphia and eventually to England. Ellen Craft was half-white, the child of her enslaver, but she could pass as white, and she posed as her husband William's owner to get them both out of the slave states. Harrowing, tense, and eminently readable - I honestly think Part 1 should be assigned reading in every American high school in the antebellum unit.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs writing under the name Linda Brent - 1861 - writing specifically to reach white women and arguing for the need for sisterhood and solidarity between white and Black women, Jacobs writes of her childhood in slavery and how terrible it was for women and mothers even under supposedly "nice" masters including supposedly "nice" white women.
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - 1853 - Born a free Black man in New York, Northup was kidnapped into slavery as an adult and sold south to Louisiana. This memoir of the brutality he endured was the basis of the 2013 Oscar-winning movie.
Early 1900s Black Life and Philosophy
Slavery is of course not the only aspect of Black history, and writers in the late 1800s and early 1900s had their own concerns, experiences, and perspectives on what it meant to be Black.
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington - 1901 - an autobiography of one of the most prominent African-American leaders and educators in the late 1800s/early 1900s, about his experiences both learning and teaching, and the power and importance of equal education. Race relations in the Reconstruction era Southern US are a major concern, and his hope that education and equal dignity could lead to mutual respect has... a long way to go still.
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois - 1903 - an iconic work of sociology and advocacy about the African-American experience as a people, class, and community. We read selections from this in Anthropology Theory but I think it should be more widely read than just assigned in college classes.
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. Du Bois - 1920 - collected essays and poems on race, religion, gender, politics, and society.
A Negro Explorer at the North Pole by Matthew Henson - 1908 - Black history doesn't have to be about racism. Matthew Henson was a sailor and explorer and was the longtime companion and expedition partner of Robert Peary. This is his adventure-memoir of the expedition that reached the North Pole. (Though his descriptions of the Indigenous Greenlandic Inuit people are... really paternalistic in uncomfortable ways even when he's trying to be supportive.)
Poetry
Standard Ebooks also compiles poetry collections, and here are some by Black authors.
Langston Hughes - 1920s - probably the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance.
James Weldon Johnson - early 1900s through 1920s - tends to be in a more traditionalist style than Hughes, and he preferred the term for the 1920s proliferation of African-American art "the flowering of Negro literature."
Sarah Louisa Forten Purvis - 1830s - a Black abolitionist poet, this is more of a chapbook of her work that was published in newspapers than a full book collection. There are very common early-1800s poetry themes of love, family, religion, and nostalgia, but overwhelmingly her topic was abolition and anti-slavery, appealing to a shared womanhood.
Science Fiction
This is Black history to me - Samuel Delany's first published novel, The Jewels of Aptor, a sci-fi adventure from the early 60s that encapsulates a lot of early 60s thoughts and anxieties. New agey religion, forgotten technology mistaken for magic, psychic powers, nuclear war, post-nuclear society that feels more like a fantasy kingdom than a sci-fi world until they sail for the island that still has all the high tech that no one really knows how to use... it's a quick and entertaining read.
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Can I ask why you hate Sarah J Maas? Genuinely asking
no 💜
anyway, here's the books by black authors i'm reading/re-reading for black history month:
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations - Toni Morrison
James Baldwin: Collected Essays - James Baldwin (includes Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds)
Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Broken Earth Series - N. K. Jemisin
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Black Leopard, Red Wolf - Marlon James
The Legacy of Orisha Series - Tomi Adeyemi
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - Langston Hughes
Well-Read Black Girl - Glory Edim
The Mead Mishaps Series - Kimberly Lemming
The Legendborn Cycle - Tracy Deonn
and here are some resources for donating and boycotting in support of gaza, congo, and sudan:
how to donate an e-sim with #ConnectingGaza
CareForGaza
BDS Movement & BDS Targeted Boycott List
what's happening in Congo: info + resources + how you can help
The War in Sudan & List of Sudanese Fundraisers
#anon#moth answers#answered#we're focusing on supporting the REAL people trying to live through REAL genocide and oppression#instead of asking about the racist authors who steal that oppression so they can rewrite it through a white lens#and water it down with a bunch of enemies to lovers grumpy x sunshine tall brooding monster man romantasy tropes
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Advice - Simon ''Ghost'' Riley x GN!Reader
Warnings: Angst, Death, lil bit of Violence, Bad Ending, English isn't my first language!
“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems
Once, you hated him. He looked down on you, always narking and remarking what was wrong with you. With your posture, how you held you weapons - hell, even how your back wasn't straight when you sat down to eat once.
Ghost seemed to always know what would piss you off the most. Always managed to annoy you on already bad days. Always the first one to see the bad in everything you did. Everything you achieved.
You didn't understand why. You also didn't really want to, to be honest. What was there to understand? You hated him and he - obviously didn't like you either.
But oh, how wrong you were - you realized, as you held his body in your arms. You saw people die on a regular basis. You killed people, too.
But this time, it was different. Completely different.
His breathing was shallow, almost not noticeable. But you could see small white huffs of air leave his - now unmasked - mouth, as it fled into the bittercold night.
It wasn't you fault, you knew that. You knew, yet it felt like it was.
If you had been just a little faster. Maybe things would've ended differently. Maybe the fatal wound that the bullet ripped through his abdomen would not have been there. Wouldn't bleed unstoppable onto the floor. Wouldn't soke into your clothes, staining them with his blood.
Him. You hated him, once.
You hated how every single time he narked about how you were holding your gun wrong, you'd listen and found he was right - it was kinda weird.
How his advice was actually good.
You wished you could tell him that, even if it was annoying at times, that you were grateful. You were grateful for him, because even if he annoyed you - he cared.
He cared for you. He wanted you to live.
He and his stupid good reflexes wanted you to live.
The same stupid good reflexes that pushed you to the side, before the bullet could pierce into your flesh.
Maybe you would lay here now. And maybe he would hold you in his arms.
I'd prefer that outcome, you think. Maybe then, he'd bark at me to be more careful next time.
If you were hit, you knew that he was competent enough to get you to safety, hell, he would've finished the mission on his own, too.
He'd tell you that he told you to be more careful - would ask if you've learnt nothing in all the times he'd spar and train with you.
But that wasn't what happened.
He was laying in the dirt, bleeding out from a bullet that should've hit you.
You wanted to apologize. To assure him that, next time, you'd notice the guy sooner.
But you knew that even if you tried, your apology would fall on deaf ears.
Not because he didn't accept it, no - you could live with that.
But because it was too late - and he was dead.
#simon riley x reader#simon ghost riley x reader#ghost x reader#cod x reader#mw2 x reader#cod mw2#cod mwii#cod angst#gn!reader#ghost x gn! reader#ghost angst
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On the Mt. Rushmore of Knopf poetry, which dates back more than a century now, the craggy profiles of Langston Hughes and Wallace Stevens would be joined by, among others, Anthony Hecht (1923-2004). His Collected Poems arrived this fall, in a handsome edition edited by Philip Hoy, who reminds us that Hecht himself felt poetry could “recover for us what he memorably called ‘the inexhaustible plenitude of the world.’” Here is “Memory,” originally from his late volume The Darkness and the Light.
Memory
Sepia oval portraits of the family,
Black-framed, adorned the small brown-papered hall,
But the parlor was kept unused, never disturbed.
Under a glass bell, the dried hydrangeas
Had bleached to the hue of ancient newspaper,
Though once, someone affirmed, they had been pink.
Pink still were the shiny curling orifices
Of matching seashells stationed on the mantel
With mated, spiked, wrought-iron candlesticks.
The room contained a tufted ottoman,
A large elephant-foot umbrella stand
With two malacca canes, and two peacock
Tail-feathers sprouting from a small-necked vase.
On a teak side table lay, side by side,
A Bible and a magnifying glass.
Green velvet drapes kept the room dark and airless
Until on sunny days toward midsummer
The brass andirons caught a shaft of light
For twenty minutes in late afternoon
In a radiance dimly akin to happiness—
The dusty gleam of temporary wealth.
More on this book and author:
Learn more about Collected Poems by Anthony Hecht.
Browse other books by Anthony Hecht and check out Late Romance, David Yezzi's recent boigraphy of the poet.
Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.
To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.
#HechtAudio#Poem#Poetry#Knopf Poetry#Knopfpoetry#poem-a-day#national poetry month#anthony hecht#memory#collected poems#knopf#poems
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MOGAI BHM- Day 11!
happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about music and literature during the Harlem Renaissance!
Literature During the Harlem Renaissance-
[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Langston Hughes, a Black man with short hair. In the photograph, he’s sitting with his arm resting on the back of a chair in front of a table and a bookshelf. He’s smiling widely and wearing a light-colored long-sleeved collared shirt with thin, vertical white stripes. End ID.]
One of the spheres most influenced and prominent during the Harlem Renaissance was that of Black literature. Black writers began to publish works about being Black in America, about Black pride and stories, about forging a racial and cultural identity, and as Black stories began to become more told on stages, they also began to be told more through literature.
Magazines were a huge part of literature during the Harlem Renaissance- they were opportunities for Black writers to collaborate and reach larger audiences. Some of the most influential magazines of the era include the NAACP-published The Crisis, and Marcus Garvey’s and the UNIA’s N*gro’s World. Publications such as these boldly discussed racial topics and allowed readers to connect with their own racial identities.
The most famous writer of the Harlem Renaissance, indeed one of the most famous and influential American writers ever, is Langston Hughes. Langston was many things- he was a poet, an essayist, a novelist, and an activist. He is most known for his poetry, but all his genres of writing revolved around racial identity. Hughes is known for saying that Black artists rejecting their racial identity stood in the way of them truly creating Black art.
Langston’s most famous works include The Weary Blues, a poetry collection about Black jazz and blues musicians and Black life in America, famous for incorporating blues and jazz into his writing as well as Black American dialects. He also collaborated with other famous artists like Aaron Douglas and Zora Neale Hurston on the magazine Fire!!, a bold magazine for Black artists focusing on race, sex, intersections, and more. Hughes wrote about and memorialized the Harlem Renaissance in his autobiography The Big Sea.
Zora Neale Hurston was another very famous writer during the Harlem Renaissance. She wasn’t afraid to write in an explicitly Black way- she wrote in Southern Black dialects, about Black pride and autonomy, and didn’t worry about appealing to a white audience, which earned her criticism for being “too black”- a label she wore with pride. She was also known for writing about colorism within Black communities. Zora wrote famous works like “Their Eyes Are Watching God” and “Barracoon”.
The Harlem Renaissance saw the growing popularity of many, many writers. Other famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Countee Cullen, whose poetry chronicled Black lives in America, Claude McKay, whose famous story ‘Home to Harlem’ detailed the life of a Black soldier, James Weldon Johnson, whose famous poem ‘Lift Every Voice And Sing’ has been set to music, and many, many others.
The Harlem Renaissance left a huge legacy on Black literature.
Music During the Harlem Renaissance-
[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of Louis Armstrong, a Black man with short hair. In the photo, he’s wearing a white, button up, collared undershirt beneath a light-colored suit jacket and a black bowtie, and he’s playing a trumpet. End ID.]
If there’s one aspect of the Harlem Renaissance that has had the most lasting impact on the world, it is music. Two of the world’s most popular, well-known, and influential genres, jazz and blues, were developed by Black musicians around and during the Harlem Renaissance. Developed in New Orleans, jazz music became an international music phenomenon.
Jazz was fast-paced, exciting, and had a focus on musical improvisation, allowing musicians to come up with their own music on the spot. Blues, a post-war musical genre that focused on slowly, passionately expressing deep emotions and difficult truths, became a staple of music in the Harlem musical scene and the Black musical scene across the country.
One of the staples of the Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant night life- this included many night clubs where Black musicians played music- as time went on, these night clubs became extremely popular, attracting huge crowds every night. They were a beautiful celebration of Black music, culture, and unity, and clubs like this are what led to the rising popularity of many Black musicians during the Harlem Renaissance.
Some of the most famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance were Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, among many others! Louis Armstrong is famous for songs like ‘What A Wonderful World’, ‘Hey Dolly’, and ‘La Vie En Rose’. Songs like these are still famous today, as are songs by the likes of Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington.
Jazz and blues music were the beating heart of the Harlem Renaissance, and to this day they are some of the hugest genres in the world, cementing the influence of Black people on the world of music.
Summary-
Literature during the Harlem Renaissance heavily focused on Black identity, pride, experiences, and exploring Black life in America
Famous Harlem Renaissance writers include Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, County Cullen, and Claude McKay
Music during the Harlem Renaissance was largely jazz and blues, two Black music styles
Music performances at night clubs sustained the energy and popularity of the Harlem Renaissance
Famous musicians of the Harlem Renaissance include Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, and Cab Calloway
tagging @intersexfairy @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter @neopronouns @justlgbtthings @genderkoolaid @spacelazarwolf
Sources-
https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/h/a/r/Harlem_Renaissance_and_Literature_fb80.html#:~:text=The%20Harlem%20Renaissance%20brought%20along,to%20signify%20their%20cultural%20identity.
https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/langston-hughes-harlem-renaissance
https://www.zoranealehurston.com/
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/harlem-renaissance-literature-guide
https://www.history.com/news/harlem-renaissance-writers
https://www.biography.com/musicians/louis-armstrong
https://www.biography.com/musicians/bessie-smith
https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance#louis-armstrong
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"The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future."
This summer, let us browse the stacks of the remarkable life and career of archivist, collector, and curator Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (the "Father Of Black History"), without whom there almost certainly would not have been a Harlem Renaissance. Born in 1874 Puerto Rico to a black mother (from the Virgin Islands) and a Puerto Rican father of German ancestry (hence his distinctive surname), Schomburg recounted a childhood tale of a bigoted grade school teacher in San Juan, who asserted that black people had "no history, art or culture." He moved to New York City in his teens but he never forgot this racist sentiment, and he remained fiercely connected to his Puerto Rican heritage. Activism called to Arturo early; in 1892 he was deeply involved with Las Dos Antillas, an advocacy group that pushed for Puerto Rican independence from Spain --a mission which of course sputtered to a disillusioning end after Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States.
Schomburg pivoted to academic life and embarked on a study of the African Diaspora. In 1911 he co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research, a long-term reclamation project in which materials on Africa and its Diaspora were collected. Schomburg would devote the next 20 years of his life to this project --travelling throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America to rare book stores, antique dealers, and even used furniture stores (one from which he apocryphally claimed to have recovered a handwritten essay by Frederick Douglass). Over time he and his team of African, Caribbean, and African American scholars would amass a collection of over 10,000 books, manuscripts, artwork, photographs, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and even sheet music. One of his proudest finds was a long-forgotten series of poems by Phillis Wheatley.
Of course as any curator will tell you, acquiring unique pieces is nothing without a means to share the knowledge and the history that comes with them --by 1930 (the year of his eventual retirement), Schomberg would have lent numerous items to schools, libraries, and conferences and organized exhibitions. In the midst of all this he wrote articles for a wide range of publications, to include Marcus Garvey's Negro World; the NAACP's The Crisis (edited by W. E. B. Du Bois), and A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen's The Messenger; as well as essays for the National Urban League and The Amsterdam News (Harlem's newspaper).
Significantly in 1926 the Carnegie Corporation bought Schomburg's collection for $10,000 (about $125,000 in today's currency), on behalf of The New York Public Library. The collection was added to the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints of the Harlem Branch on 135th Street, of which Schomburg would later be appointed curator (following a stint as curator of the Negro Collection at Fisk University). The Division became the "go-to" centerpiece of many a Black artist, writer, and scholar; to include Arna Wendell Bontemps and Zora Neale Huston. After his death in 1938, the Division was renamed the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature, History and Prints. Schomberg's protégé, an up-and-coming author and poet named Langston Hughes, assumed responsibility for the collection.
Today the collection is known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (still under the auspices of The New York Public Library) --now topping out at more than 11 million indexed items, and considered to be one of the world's foremost research centers on Africa and the African Diaspora.
#blacklivesmatter#dothework#teachtruth#history detective#new york public library#arturo alfonso schomburg#harlem renaissance
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Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a think to which we black are wise.
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
— Langston Hughes, Collected Poems (1994)
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April is National Poetry Month! Here's some of my favorite collections! Full titles under the cut!
Feed by Tommy Pico
Black Movie by Danez Smith
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
The Twenty Ninth Year by Hala Alyan
If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar
Nature Poem by Tommy Pico
Femme in Public by Alok Vaid-Menon
IRL by Tommy Pico
I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom
A Place Called No Homeland by Kai Cheng Thom
Homie by Danez Smith
Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
#bookblr#poetry#national poetry month#kai cheng thom#danez smith#tommy pico#alok vaid-menon#langston hughes#fatimah asghar#hala alyan#claudia rankine
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Advice to the Able-Bodied Poet Entering the Disability Poetics Workshop - Liv Mammone
For Jennifer Bartlett and Shira Erlichman
1. Let's just save time—Yes I have seen Rain Man, The Miracle Worker, My Left Foot, or, more recently, The Theory of Everything. I wanna fuck Daniel Day Lewis too but can we not?
2. If all the the Special Needs Kids everybody's mom/cousin/friend/friend's mom/cousin's friend's mom has ever worked with got together, they could overthrow the government and we'd see some real change. Those people aren't reference points for me. There are no reference points for me.
3. This isn't the Whose Life Sucks More game. You have seen moments I can never imagine.
4. When asking about my disability, please remember you have Siri. What you really need to know will come up in the poems.
5. Similarly, if you decide you need to ask my diagnosis, I can guarantee those ugly sounding words are all I have in common with whoever you know. If you don't know anyone, asking me what does that mean isn't ingratiating. I'm not a painting by Warhol. Asterisk: if you're just meeting me and that's your opening? That, or so what happened to you—you're suspect. I have a favorite band, a gaggle of furry children. Let's start there.
6. The words disability, disorder, and disease aren't synonymous.
7. And while we're at it, let's talk about language. You're here for that above all right? Me too. But I get to decide how it's done, not you. If I say cripple, it's because I like how the consonants break like bones. I'm not handing you a membership card. If I say call me "special needs" and I'll roll over your foot, it doesn't mean that softness won't comfort others. Political correctness is kind of like using correct pronouns. So many words have been made up and thrown onto my flesh. None were my name.
8. If you didn't get the above reference to pronouns, I'll write a separate piece for you.
9. Your ear will need to curve around the rhythm of speech. Your pace will hunger to leave me limping. You will want to catch me as I lurch forward; lead me by elbow or hand; not to repeat yourself; to talk as fast as you do out there. Slow down. Slow everything down.
10. The phrase but you don't look sick can go fuck itself with a moving train covered in chainsaws.
11. Don't use the word inspiration unless you're talking about Whitman, Langston Hughes, John Keats or Jesus.
12. Matter of fact, leave Jesus out of it altogether; he's busy enough.
13. It isn't a wheelchair; it's a fully automated battle station. It isn't a cane; it's a dowsing rod. It isn't a limp; it's a swagger. It isn't a stim—it's how my fabulous self is pulling magic out of the air.
14. I'm not your metaphor. Phantom limbs, deafness, or blindness as figurative language in your poems will result in my unhinging my fucking jaw.
15. If you find yourself saying something that begins with no offense, but I want you to stop. Take a breath. And say to yourself these three sentences: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said right now? Does this need to be said right now by me? If the answer to any of those is no, return to start do not collect $200.
16. Laugh.
17. Be honest.
18. Your head had best be a microscope. Ask yourself why you're here. But question my motives, too. Slam your hand hard on my buttons.
19. Some kind of dragon needed slaying to get to this room, whether it be the nasty bus driver or the thoughts of suicide. So somebody's probably gonna show up in pajamas, crocks, mismatched socks, un showered, hair falling loose from ponytail—whatever. Either they're embarrassed or don't give a fuck. Either way, they don't need you mentioning it.
20. Speak for me, not over me.
21. Yes, I can have sex. I hope everybody in here writes a jam so graphic it makes your goosebumps mambo just so you never ask a disabled person that ever again, unless you're offering.
22. I don't think shy people become poets, but in case you are, you best chill if you fear the body. If I'm gonna write a colostomy bag free verse or a pantoum about how hard it is to negotiate my period on crutches, I wanna do it in peace.
23. You need Advil? Guaranteed, somebody got you.
24. If I have to leave the room while you're reading, sorry in advance.
25. Let me point out, Tiny Tim has been fucking me over since 1843. If I'm happy, it's taken for a miracle; if I'm not, I remind them of all they have and all the work they have to do. I could be a big smile, a raised fist, an eye glittered with tears.
26. This is the place I come to sharpen my teeth; to weep until I am the Danube. I don't care if you're frightened.
27. Trigger warnings. That is all.
28. Halle Berry, Harriet Tubman, Orlando Bloom, Clinton, Christie, Darwin. A lot of your faves are disabled. Just like a lot of your faves are actually bisexual. (More breaking news at 11.)
29. And while we're on that, being disabled doesn't mean you've checked off your minority box on the form. Just saying.
30. I don't want to talk about me; how's my stanza structure?
31. Intersectionality isn't a buzzword.
32. I will ask if I need your help. Repeat this a billion times.
33. Related note: you wouldn't grab someone on the subway. You'd let your face smash into the pole before steadying yourself on the person next to you. So why in the name of God's teeth would you touch me or whatever apparatus I may have without asking?!
34. Remember, you're one slip in the shower, doctor's visit, missed turn away from being me.
35. If I fall, the way you gasp hurts worse than impact.
36. I'm not blaming you. I'm saying pay attention.
37. Inevitably, someone will be forced to stop coming. Email them; that'd be cool.
38. Even if you pity me, don't mess around when it comes to editing.
39. Your body is so damn fucking beautiful. It's like nothing else.
40. Please remember that compliance with any or all of the aforementioned will not result in praise of any kind, cookies, medals, or otherwise. Thank you.
41. People are like poems. They don't get finished, they just stop.
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🍄 Fairy Poems edited by Lynne Greenberg
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
“May these fairy poems offer flight. May they lure and allure you.” —Lynne Greenberg
I’m so happy this book was published and I found out about it as I’m going through a “fairy stage” that I’m not sure will ever stop. I remember making fairy huts at recess and I still have a fairy house in my backyard.
Anyway, it’s really hard to choose favorite poems in this collection of so vast an array, but if I had to choose Three I’d choose:
🍄 “Across the Border” by Sophie Jewett
🍄 “After Many Springs” by Langston Hughes
🍄 “The Fairy Lover” by Moreen Fox Cheavasa
#godzilla reads#fairy poems#Lynne Greenberg#book review#poetry collection#poetry books#fairy books#reading#book blog#booklr#bookish#booklover#quotes
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I have lost my last hinge and started a new NiF fic
(this one is short, I just need to test out character voices, I swear)
and I really want to title it by riffing off that Langston Hughes poem and that one absolutely devastating gif set (this one, it stabs me in the heart every time I see it)
at some point I will use my eclectic collection of actual Chinese poetry for fic? I suppose?
until then, no gods no masters, I neither can nor will be stopped
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