Here’s a two-fer Music Poems post (since I missed November by a mile) — two with Bessie Smith, the ‘Empress of the Blues’ who had an unsurpassed voice and was in her time (the 1920s) the highest paid black performer around.
First up, Jericho Brown’s “Langston Blues“. I saw Jericho Brown last weekend at a Copper Canyon Press shindig in Seattle and holy moly is he a great performer! He was mesmerizing and his work was beautiful (not pretty beautiful, hard beautiful). I strongly urge you, if you have the chance to hear him live, to take it.
[…]
Let my words
Lie sound in the mouths of men
Repeating invocations pure
And perfect as a moanThat mounts in the mouth of Bessie Smith.
Blues for the angels kicked out
Of heaven. Blues for the angelsWho miss them still. Blues
For my people and what water
They know. O weary drinkersDrinking from the bloody river,
Why go to heaven with Harlem
So close? […]
