blues became a rage: everybody, blacks and whites, loved it and wanted to hear it.
             It was in these years of immense popularity of the blues that Langston Hughes wrote his poem "The Weary Blues". Using a verse form, with a rhythm and tone so familiar to many, he created a link between music and poetry, a connection that opened white people's eyes to his poetry. This poem was one of his first poems to reach whites and it laid the foundation for his successful career as a poet and writer.
             Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
             Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
             By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
             To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
             With his ebony hands on each ivory key
             He made that poor piano moan with melody.
             Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
             He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
             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--
             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.
             The poem tells the story of a man in Harlem, listening to and watching a black man playing his blues in a café. The speaker seems to wonder what makes the singer play his song the way he does.
             After a close reading of Langston Hughes' poem "The Weary Blues", it struck me that it felt as if I was reading the lyrics to an actual blues song. As with all blues songs, this poem has a s...