Famous Writers with Dogs: Langston Hughes

Writers need inspiration somewhere in life, and for many that inspiration comes from their pet dogs.

This is a running series where we post pictures of famous writers with their canine companions--the cute, the cuddly, the creepy. And that's just the writers.


Today:  Langston Hughes

This looks like an ad for some off-brand cologne for men, the type that's sold at a suburban mall kiosk, where the bottles say "Tuscany," but the smells say "Tampa."

The old saying is dogs look like their owners. But in this case, what if the dog looks like Langston Hughes' poetry? Lean, stately, and more beautiful than your own?

Are you really addicted to a specific poet? Take them to work with you.

Jonesing for a little Robert Frost or Maya Angelou during the weekdays, but find yourself going through withdrawals and the shakes while at work? Good news! You can take them to work with you.

Oh, hello, T. S. Elephant. #TakeYourPoetToWorkDay #PoetToWorkDay @tspoetry pic.twitter.com/PkZ8PmZZhG

— WC Literary House (@WCLiteraryHouse) July 20, 2016

An organization called Tweetspeak Poetry sponsors various poetry "holidays" throughout a given year, all in an effort to make poetry more approachable to today's modern sensibilities. Picture your mom gussying up cauliflower when you were a kid all in hopes you might digest more of it. Same thing.

The third Wednesday of every July is Take Your Poet to Work Day. This year that would be July 19th. As the sponsors, Tweetspeak Poetry has a downloadable coloring book of famous poets ranging from American (Dickinson, Hughes, Whitman, etc.) to international (Akhmatova, Neruda, Issa, etc.).

Happy #TakeYourPoettoWorkDay Forget yours @ home? Stop by the 2nd fl. & make a new one :) @tspoetry #poettowork pic.twitter.com/hT3xQEuqZF

— CSCC Library (@CSCC_Library) July 20, 2016

After coloring in your favorite poet, you're supposed to cut out the drawing and adhere it to a Popsicle stick and--voila!--you take them to work with you. Not only do you get to color, you have a semi-valid excuse to scarf down a half-dozen Popsicles all of a sudden.

Tweetspeak also recommends leaving coloring book sheets in the lunch room, all in hopes that lazy coworker of yours might actually show some initiative and color in their own favorite poet, too.

I snuck a #poettowork today @KCLibrary #AnnaAkhmatova pic.twitter.com/Z3fc8tj3Yz

— KaiteStover (@MarianLiberryan) July 20, 2016

Polish off another half-dozen Popsicles and tell yourself you're just doing it to be selfless and help others who need a stick.

You're so generous!!

The Friday Poem: As I Grew Older, by Langston Hughes

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


As I Grew Older, by Langston Hughes

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Should they sit at the kids' table or with the adults? Seventeen famous writers as children judged.

Did you grow up eating at the kids' table during Thanksgiving? You know, when your family chose to banish you into a corner with an assortment of cousins that you rarely saw and hardly liked? The cousin who's a few oats short of a Cheerio? The other cousin who lacks personal grooming habits and doesn't know the tender touch of a facecloth? Yeah--that happened to a lot of us.

We were all kids at some point though. Some of us were debonair, and some of us were a hot mess. And so were famous writers.

Here are seventeen famous writers when they were children or teenagers--and whether they should luck out and eat with the adults or be at the kids' table for Thanksgiving:

1.) Robert Frost

Even as a baby, Frost couldn't manage a smile. And it all went downhill from here.

Kids' table!

2.) Vladimir Nabokov

The snappy tie, the tube socks channeling his wannabe inner Flashdance waiting to break free, all while rocking penny loafers.

Adults' table!

3.) Virginia Woolf

She even judges while playing cricket. You don't need her judging your homemade stuffing, too.

Kids' table!

4.) Langston Hughes

Somewhere under that giant mound of baby clothes is Hughes. Is he a wizard? He might be a wizard.

Adults' table!

5.) Roald Dahl

There's a 50% chance he just walked off the set of Downton Abbey.

Adults' table!

6.) Jorge Luis Borges

It's as if baby Spock just came back from a cruise ship adventure.

Adults' table!

7.) F. Scott Fitzgerald

A whip for the toy horse?

And we all know he's going to drink all the booze anyway...

Kids' table!

8.) Franz Kafka

Is that a goat? Ram? Sheep?

Whatever it is, it has a hat. No one can deny a hat-wearing sheep is a winning look.

Adults' table!

9.) Carl Jung

That's the face of judgment. No one needs that while eating the sweet potatoes.

Kids' table!

10.) J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien and his younger brother are channeling the pilgrim look. But they're missing the stylish hats with the belt buckles.

Kids' table!

11.) Aldous Huxley

The shoes say, "I came here on the Mayflower."

The sour face says, "I need a nap."

Kids' table!

12. Arthur Rimbaud

You just kind of get the vibe that after he passes you the bowl of peas, he'll politely read you a poem.

Adults' table!

13.) Alice Munro

You try wearing a bonnet and look so cute. You can't, can you?

Adults' table!

14.) Flannery O'Connor

She might be good with small talk, but the entire time she'll be plotting a short story where she makes you a creep.

Kids' table!

15.) Noam Chomsky

Don't let the coy smile fool you. That starched white collar channels a Miles Standish quality.

Kids' table!

16.) Victor Hugo

Little Lord Fauntleroy, is that you?

Adults' table!

17.) Stephen King

You usually only see 85-year old men wearing pants that high.

Adults' table!

The merging of Langston Hughes, Ice-T, jazz, and art.

In 1987, Ice-T could lay claim to one first in music history: the first explicit warning label on an album.

In 1992, the country was aflutter over his song 'Cop Killer.'

But in 2015, things have changed a bit. Maybe age has slowed him down, but Ice-T doesn't care for controversy so much as he cares for jazz and poetry. That doesn't mean he doesn't want to speak out about inequalities he sees in the world--he just wants to change the way he speaks about them. To do that, he's joining a jazz ensemble to recite Langston Hughes's poetry at the EFG London Jazz Festival.

Indeed, Hughes often wrote poetry with a heavy jazz influence. In 1961 he wrote 'Ask Your Mama,' a series of verse about the experience of living in America as a black person specifically to be accompanied by jazz music. Before his verses ever made the stage, Hughes died.

Now, Ice-T is taking over where Hughes left off. Musician Ron McCurdy wrote a score to Hughes's verses, but sat on the project for nearly twenty years until now--when he approached Ice-T to be the presenter of the verses as the jazz played, accompanied by art work that flashes on screen behind him.

So do the issues of the 1960s still resonate today? Ice-T tells the BBC he thinks so. "What Langston was writing is definitely still relevant--all that stuff about civil rights and poor people [...] You can go back to the '60s and you see stuff that's still going on in society now."

Poets Reading Poetry: Langston Hughes

Poetry is meant to be read aloud, but rarely is. As Oscar Wilde once said, "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

So, cutting out the middle man, here is where we'll post famous poets reading their own poetry--the words off the page and in your ears, as they intended. And hopefully nothing is lost in the process.


Today:  Langston Hughes





Langston Hughes was no stranger to recording his poetry, whether it was simply an audio recording or on television. Likewise, early television wasn't a stranger to variety programming, which is how we get the recording above and a famous poet reading his work. Imagine Maya Angelou reading poetry on Conan today. Ain't happening.

In 1958 Hughes made an appearance on CBUT, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's British Columbia affiliate station based out of Vancouver. Unlike many stations created in the early years of television, CBUT still exists today, a peg in the wide swath of Canada's CBC national empire, broadcasting on a transmitter located on the semi-bald Mount Seymour outside of Vancouver.

The 7 O'Clock Show was a variety program of sorts with a literal title, hosted by Bob Quintrell (the gentleman you see at the beginning of the video) at 7pm. The poem Hughes reads (starting at the 1:39 mark) is "The Weary Blues," first published over 30 years earlier in 1925, and a natural choice to recite with band accompaniment. Sure, it sounds like jazz and not the blues, but why quibble?

Hughes changes only a few words from the original publication of the poem, mainly the fifth line, otherwise, the poem remains the same.

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, 

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, 

I heard a Negro play. 

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night 

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light 

He did a lazy sway...

He did a lazy sway...

To the tune o' those Weary Blues. 

With his ebony hands on each ivory key 

He made that poor piano moan with melody. 

O Blues! 

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool 

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. 

Sweet Blues! 

Coming from a black man's soul. 

O Blues! 

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-- 

"I got the Weary Blues 

And I can't be satisfied. 

Got the Weary Blues 

And can't be satisfied-- 

I ain't happy no mo' 

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 Friday Poem: Gods, by Langston Hughes

Every Friday we'll have The Friday Poem. (A capitalized title, so you know it's official and whatnot.) Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to end the week.

Like this one:


Gods, by Langston Hughes

The ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people
Are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.


Published in The Messenger in 1924.

Top 10 Spellcheck Whoopsies.

Yahoo.com came out with their top ten miscues that spellcheck doesn't catch. The truest bit about this article is that after reading it everyone will still make the same mistakes. The same holds true for this blog post. Eh, our collective short-term memory isn't too hot, but why focus on potential dementia in all of us? That's no fun.

Some of the whoopsies, according to Yahoo?

1.) Affect / Effect:

Verb and noun. Simple as that. Will you remember? No. Why not? Might I suggest it's because of the stubbornness your mother talks about?

2.) Would have / Would of:

This is all about pronunciation issues. People say would of (in a mumble like James Dean, with a little swagger, as if some worrying girlfriend that looks like Natalie Wood is telling you not to race Johnny Martins because his car is just too fast!!) when they really just mean would have.

3.) Then / Than:

Really?

4.) It's / Its:

This one I can get behind because the grammar rule is flawed.

See, apostrophes are to be used to show possession (among other reasons, but let's ignore those for now, because this is a wonderful land of make believe)--so that is Helen's motorcycle, and Myrtle's pickup truck, and Ethel's Porche 911 convertible. But for some reason that rule gets thrown out when it comes to its/it's. Conjunctions are to blame. It is becomes it's, and when a possessive it comes around you're to eliminate the apostrophe altogether.

And, yes--I'll forget my own rule explanation right there in about two minutes--umm, nope, now.

5.) Sales / Sails:

Wait, what? People are screwing up this one? Really? People are saying The sales on my boat and I made a lot of sails today at my farmer's market? Granted, you could make sails while at a farmer's market. It could be a very aqua-oriented type farmer's market crowd. But, still, really? Sales/sails? Have we come to this?

6.) Wonder / wander:

It's all Langston Hughes's fault.




(Side note: I've never heard of an It's-It Ice Cream Treat before, but I want one now. It looks captivating and dangerous all the same.)