Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- Review: Honey Bunch (2026)
- “I have already been accused of trying to drown a boatload of wild Irishmen on Aran!” — Robert Flaherty
- Substack: Interview with author Julia Cooke
- X Marks the Spot
- Valentine’s Day Story #2: The Spitball Valentine
- Valentine’s Day Story #1: An Eyeball and a Dozen Roses
- “I looked like a bad girl. But I wasn’t a bad girl, really. I was a very nice little girl, until I found out what life was.”– Harriet Andersson
- Happy Birthday, Burt Reynolds: “My love is unironic.”
- “Listen, I never meant to make money. I never wanted it. I’m a singer, man.” — Gene Vincent
- “Each of us have a gift, you see, given us freely by the universe. And each of us with every breath gives something back” — Kim Stanley
Recent Comments
- sheila on 2025 Books Read
- sheila on 2025 Books Read
- sheila on Valentine’s Day Story #2: The Spitball Valentine
- James on 2025 Books Read
- Kelly C Sedinger on Valentine’s Day Story #2: The Spitball Valentine
- Jim Burrows on “Milk Cow Blues Boogie”: From Estes to Elvis to Eddie
- sheila on January 2026 Viewing Diary
- sheila on January 2026 Viewing Diary
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Titus Andronicus
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
- Maddy on January 2026 Viewing Diary
- Daniel V on January 2026 Viewing Diary
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Titus Andronicus
- Krsten Westergaard on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Titus Andronicus
- Gemstone on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Titus Andronicus
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Taming of the Shrew
-
Tag Archives: Langston Hughes
“and I / spoke with tongues that sent their devotees / out of this world!” — poet Melvin B. Tolson
“I, as a black poet, have absorbed the Great Ideas of the Great White World, and interpreted them in the melting-pot idiom of my people. My roots are in Africa, Europe, and America.” – Melvin B. Tolson, 1965 interview It’s … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, poetry
1 Comment
“The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung people laugh.” — Langston Hughes
The Blues always impressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter … of a sadness where there is no god to appeal to. — Langston … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Countee Cullen, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, Michael Schmidt, poetry
5 Comments
“The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.” — Jean Toomer
Poet/novelist Jean Toomer was born on this day in 1894. He died in 1967. He saw some shit. Toomer’s family tree encompasses the diversity of pre-and-post-Civil War South: slaves, freemen, black, white. His father, Nathan Toomer, was born into slavery. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, fiction, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, poetry
1 Comment
“The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have, else they will never have better.” — Harriet Monroe
“I started in early with Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, with Dickens and Thackeray; and always the book-lined library gave me a friendly assurance of companionship with lively and interesting people, gave me friends of the spirit to ease my loneliness.” – … Continue reading
“I want to write poems that will be non-compromising.” — poet Gwendolyn Brooks
It’s her birthday today. I first encountered Gwendolyn Brooks’s stuff in Humanities in high school. Let’s hear it for public education. It’s only in retrospect that I can really see how good the curriculum was. We did a unit on … Continue reading
“If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.” — poet Countee Cullen
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! — Countee Cullen It’s his birthday today. Cullen is often compared to Langston Hughes (my post on Hughes here), seems a little unfair, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Countee Cullen, H.L. Mencken, Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, poetry
8 Comments
“Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.” –Jessie Redmon Fauset
“Better the wound forever seeking balm Than this gray calm!” –Jessie Redmon Fauset, from “Dead Fires” Jessie Redmon Fauset, whose birthday it is today, was a “forgotten writer” for many years, after her heyday in the 20s and 30s. Her … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, poetry
Leave a comment
Year in Review: Running my mouth in 2016
I look at this and I wonder why I always feel like I haven’t done jack-squat. Or, at the very least, I could do more. Well, I always can do more. Regardless, here are links to some of the things … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, Movies, On This Day, Personal, RIP
Tagged Abbas Kiarostami, Baz Luhrmann, Buddy Holly, Camille Paglia, Carrie Fisher, Carroll Baker, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, Chantal Akerman, Compulsion, David Bowie, Dean Stockwell, Dolly Parton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bishop, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Eminem, friends, Gena Rowlands, George Stevens, Gilda, Isabelle Huppert, James Dean, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, July and Half of August, Katherine Dunn, Langston Hughes, Little Richard, Marion Cotillard, Marlon Brando, Matthias Schoenaerts, Merle Haggard, Mia Hansen-Løve, Miriam Hopkins, Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca Hall, Richard Linklater, Rocky, Sam Cooke, Shakespeare, Something Wild, Stephen King, Sudden Fear, Supernatural, Sylvester Stallone, Tennessee Williams, The Great Gatsby, Wanda Jackson, women directors, year in writing, Zac Efron
6 Comments
The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Langston Hughes
Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2: Contemporary Poetry, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair Hughes is one of the most American of poets. There were other poets of the … Continue reading
How Beautiful I Am
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed — I, too, am America. — Langston Hughes, “I, too”