Literature02 Dec 2008 12:29 pm
Today’s entry in The Intellectual Devotional introduces Langston Hughes’ great poem “I, Too, Sing America.” We can’t think of a better compliment to that entry than another great Hughes poem: “Jazzonia.”
Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!
In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.
Oh, singing tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!
Were Eve’s eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?
Oh, shining tree!
Oh, silver rivers of the soul!
In a whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A wonderful analysis of this poem is included in a volume that every Devoted Intellectual should read: Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow Burn. In that book, Paglia introduces and analyzes “Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems,” as the subtitle indicates. Her selection of poems is strong throughout, and her interpretations are never marred by the kind of academic prose that would send most readers running from a book of “poetry criticism.” As Paglia has immodestly pointed out, “Break, Blow, Burn may be the only book of poetry criticism that has ever reached the national bestseller list in the United States.”
How does she read Hughes’ poem? She starts by making an intriguing point: “modernist” poetry has mostly been associated with the despair and desperation of works like T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” but most modernist poems were written just as jazz — one of the great new popular entertainments of the twentieth century — was coming into its own. Hughes was almost unique in embracing the celebratory aesthetic of jazz in his work, rather than dwelling on the uglier aspects of humanity revealed, for instance, in the trenches of the First World War.
For her actual line-by-line analysis, you’ll have to read the book. Order it here.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.