Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes

About the Book

Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Fall 2024 Poetry Books

Before Langston Hughes and his literary prowess became synonymous with American poetry, he was an eighteen-year-old on a train to Mexico City, seeking funds to pursue his passion. His early poems, beloved verses like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," were written without formal training, often on the back of napkins and envelopes, and were inspired by the sights and sounds of Black working-class people he encountered in his early life.

Blues in Stereo is a posthumous collection of these early works, in which we see Langston Hughes like we've never seen him before. In the intimate pages of his handwritten journals, you will travel with Hughes outside of Harlem as he ventures to the American South and Mexico, sails through the Caribbean, and becomes the only Harlem renaissance poet to visit Africa. He celebrates love as a tool of liberation in his poems and journal entries. His songs included showcase musicality of verse poetry. And the book even includes a play he co-wrote with Duke Ellington with a full score that experiments with rhythm and structure.

Blues in Stereo portrays a young man coming of age in a changing world. Page by page, a young, fresh-faced Hughes contends with matters beyond his years with raw talent. National Book Award nominated poet Danez Smith offers their insight and notes on themes, challenges, and obsessions that Hughes early work contains. Blues in Stereo foreshadows a master poet that will go on to define literature for centuries to come.

About the Author :
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1901. Often called 'The People's Poet,' he authored and edited over thirty works poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books. He was a poetic innovator and a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and his writing promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and helped shape American literature and politics. He died on May 22, 1967, in New York City.

Danez Smith (Curator) is the author of four poetry collections including Bluff, Homie and Don't Call Us Dead. Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and has been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez lives in Minneapolis with their people.

Review :
This thoughtfully assembled and arranged volume honours a corner of a legendary poet's life . . . In Blues in Stereo, we get to witness a young poet figuring out the work and the self in tandem, clearly brimming with potential . . . This book is not only a gift for what it gives us of Hughes, but additionally, it is a gift to any poet working at any stage of their life and career, needing a reminder that there is more to reach for. Hughes transformed the way America understood Black literature and transformed the way the world understood Black life. He wrote directly into the fullness and complexity of the Black experience. The suffering. The joy. The violence. The resilience. His poetry revels in the music of our language. His love for his people leaps from the page. What a gift that Danez Smith, one of our greatest living poets, serves as our guide through this stunning collection of Hughes' early work. What a gift that we get to see the past and present meeting in this beautiful way. This collection of Hughes's early work allows us to see the great poet he would become for the young genius he was . . . I am grateful for this volume and for Hughes's willingness to follow his dream and his commitment to write about dreams his entire life.