Pianos and Peaches: Jazz and Life with Hughes and Eliot

I find Langston Hughes’ poetry moving and rhythmically brilliant. I sense the influence of jazz music in many of the syncopations and in the short lines followed by the long swelling lines that pour forth with little hesitation. “The Weary Blues” reminded me of a summer I lived in New Orleans. Something about Hughes’ poem captured the spirit of this music with exquisite vividness. I could hear this weary blues player making “the poor piano moan with melody.” One musky night, I squeezed into the dim, hot atmosphere of Preservation Hall. For two hours, I experienced jazz music rather than simply listened to it.

“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.”

Five men who played jazz like an extension of their souls gave me something that night at Preservation Hall that I will not forget and cannot even contain in an alphabet of letters with no movement or sound. At times I would close my eyes and listen to the interplay, the subtle and easy dialoging amongst the instruments that flowed freely and spontaneously. For the most part, I kept my eyes open and fixed upon the musicians. Watching the creation of jazz, the syncopated and risky and relaxed creation of souls put to music, was even more breathtaking than the sound of it. The men closed their eyes as they played, old African American men whose instruments wore crevices on their fingers and whose fingers wore crevices on their instruments. I could not tell whether they were playing their trumpets and saxophones or whether the instruments were playing them.

I absolutely loved “Song for a Dark Girl.” Though the poem was published in 1927, I wonder whether Hughes was alluding to a time of slavery in the South pre-Civil War. He uses the phrase “Way Down South in Dixie” as a sort of refrain to open each of the three stanzas. The second line of each stanza seems to be the pouring forth of a kind of lament—either (break the heart of me) or (Bruised body high in air). The poem’s narrator grieves over the death of his lover, hung in a tree. In the second stanza, he says:
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.
The poem is rife with religious imagery. The adjective “white” as a descriptive for Jesus is ironic in many ways and reflective of middle class America’s warped perspective. Historically, Jesus was far from the good looking, blue eyed white man we see in Hollywood depictions. Jesus was of Jewish descent and likely had a dark complexion with Middle Eastern features. Yet Jesus has become commercialized into a handsome white American, when in reality, his life and his appearance were considerably different than that false standard. The grieved lover of the poem speaks of his lover’s “bruised body high in air,” which alludes to the bruised and broken body of Jesus on the cross, paraded high in the air for all to see and mock. In the final stanza, the narrator says:
Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.
This final stanza also reflects the fate of Jesus on the cross. Historically Jesus hung naked, as soldiers were casting lots for his clothing. Nakedness was another element of the humiliation involved in Roman crucifixion. Jesus hung upon a cross, which was likely made of rough wood fashioned from a tree. Jesus is referred to as God’s expression of love, or Love itself. The parallels between this innocent lover and Jesus are beautiful, moving, and effectively crafted.

On a different note, I remember reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in high school and deconstructing the various literary devices. This time upon reading the poem, I was most intrigued by the recurrent theme of the extraordinarily significant hidden within the mundane and the sense of fear in confronting the really real. Eliot speaks of Prufrock:

“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Measuring out a life in coffee spoons becomes a sad and modern examination of the sterile and measured exercise life had become for many people. Throughout the poem, Eliot keeps building up to the burning question… “Do I dare disturb the universe?” Interlaced with this question is mention of trivial matters, such as teas and cakes and the women talking of Michelangelo.
“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?”
In a world on the brink of World War I, were people willing to ask the difficult questions? Can one question the meaning of life and whether one has choices within what can feel like a meaningless universe after taking tea and cakes? Or do we let the chance slip by? Prufrock’s burning question about the universe diminishes by the end of the poem, because he cannot bring himself to examine the really real.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

We must dare to eat a peach. Maybe we should all eat peaches at Preservation Hall.