"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."
Hughes is known as the founder of jazz poetry, where the rhythm of the poem mirrors the sounds of jazz music when read aloud. Hughes felt it was uniquely African-American and its effect on him shows quite frequently in his writings. As he writes in his story "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" Hughes describes the music style as "One of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America... the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile." Soon after moving to Harlem and immediately indulging himself into its culture, we begin to see more of these lyrical, musical poems like "The Weary Blues."
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