Something About the Blues

ISBN: 9781402210648

By: Al Young

Published: 10/31/2007

Available Formats

Hardcover

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Available: Worldwide

$22.95

Description
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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 the Author

California Poet Laureate Al Young is also a novelist and essayist. He is the recipient of NEA, Guggenheim, and Fulbright Fellowships, plus awards for fiction and nonfiction. A popular reader and performer, Young lectures worldwide on literature, music, creativity, the arts, and African American culture. Young lives in Berkeley, California.

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Table of Contents
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Epigraph -
Introduction: Something About the Blues -
The Weary Blues (by Langston Hughes) -
Dawn at Oakland Airport
A Poem for Listeners
Love Listening to Lionel Hampton Play the Vibraharp
Ars Poetica -
You Catch Yourself on a Train with Yo-Yo Ma -
April in Paris -
Elevator Over the Hill -
Landscape Mode -
Just Gimme Some Kinda Sign, Girl -
The Blues Don’t Change -
The Elvis I Knew Well Was Spiritual -
A Dance for Ma Rainey -
Blues My Naughty Poetry Taught Me -
The Prestidigitator 1 -
The Prestidigitator 2 -
Michigan Water (or, How Lake Superior Informs Us) -
Ba-lues Done Gone Ballistic -
Sundays in Democracies -
Lester Leaps In -
Animal -
A Low-Flying Blues for Somebody -
Blues in December -
January -
Blue Monday -
Who I Am in Twilight -
Lost Passport Blues -
Distances -
Dear Old Stockholm -
The Old O. O. Blues -
Uncle Sam Ain’t No Woman, Take 2
The Indiana Gig -
Dead Moth Blues -
Giving the Drummer Some -
Moss -
Green Death Blues -
The Old-Fashioned Cincinnati Blues -
Ruby My Dear -
Five -
See, See, Moon -
Saudades: The Portuguese Blues -
My Spanish Heart -
Dexter -
Clearing the Way for Ecstasy -
Body and Soul: 16 minutes, 59 seconds -
Step Out on the Tightrope and Don’t Look Down -
Straight No Chaser -
Conjugal Visits -
Prelude to a Kiss -
The Leadbelly Song -
The Midnight Special Revisited -
Up Vernon’s Alley -
Sweet Sixteen Lines -
The Pianist Prepares Her Playlist -
Los Angeles, Los Angeles: One Long-Shot, One Cutaway -
Prez in Paris, 1959
Detroit 1958 -
A Poem for Lena Horne -
Ava, She Was One of Your Women -
Rush -
Groupie -
Hot House -
The James Cotton Band at Keystone -
Squirrels -
A Little Poem About Jazz -
Dark Red -
Jungle Strut -
The Art of Benny Carter -
The Song Turning Back into Itself 3 -
The Song Turning Back into Itself 5 -
Tango -
By Heart -
Potato Head Blues -
One Hundred Year-Old Jazz Head Tells All -
Darkness, Its Very Hang and Feel -
Any Inner City Blues -
The Tenderloin -
Brownie Eyes -
What Is the Blues? -
Billie -
On the Road with Billie -
Invitation -
A Little More Traveling Music -
Silent Parrot Blues -
The Real Bird World -
Depression, Blues, Flamenco, Wine, Despair -
Topsy: Part 2 -
Disco Revisited-
Your Basic Black Poet
Herrick Hospital, Fifth Floor -
Blues for Malcolm X
The John Coltrane Dance
The Lovesong of O. O. Gabugah
Extraordinary Rendition Blues
Myself When I Am Real
You Do All This for Love
The Buddhist Way Out West Reflects on Boots
Doo-Wop: The Moves
Now’s the Time
Jazz as Was
Jackie McLean: Alto Saxophone
Tribute -
A Hymn to Her
Watsonville After the Quake
Old Trane, San Diego -
Snowy Morning Blues
A Sunday Sonnet for My Mother’s Mother
Springtime in the Rockies
Cold Sweat
Romance without Finance
Easy Overhead
Just a Flat-Footed London Singer
New Orleans Intermission
Flirt
Why Love Bach’s Goldberg Variations?
Going for Broke
Something About the Blues