Something About The Blues: An Unlikely Collection Of Poetry [with Cd]

All combined, these wayward pages say something about the blues.
Beaded and threaded throughout America's musical mosaic, the blues make you feel and hear. Sometimes you can count them off in measures and beats, but largely they dwell in a feral state; blues truth is wild and menacing. Like poetry, the blues will always be dramatically unpredictable, sometimes torturous and sometimes pleasurable.
In these 120 poems and audio CD you'll find:
--Weary travelers longing and looking for peace and quiet
--Yo-Yo Ma on a kids? TV show
--An elevator reeking of hard living
--Elvis trying to buy enlightenment
--Politicians and citizens scrambling for answers
--A frantic search for a lost passport
--?The Weary Blues? on Lenox Avenue read by Langston Hughes

Al Young, California's Poet Laureate, has sung and played the blues, drawn inspiration from the blues and incorporated the blues and blues stylings into his poetry. His poetic stories ooze with unvarnished real life. Appropriate for a book about the blues, many of Al's dynamic, soulful readings are backed by a live band on the included audio CD.


Like Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes, who first popularized the blues as a poetic form, California Poet Laureate Al Young has written about the blues, played the blues and drawn inspiration from the blues.
Something About the Blues uses the blues as a theme throughout 100 new and previously-published poems. Selections evoke the cold, hard city, love gone wrong and blues music itself, with tributes to Ma Rainey, Lena Horne and other notable performers.
Something About the Blues includes an audio CD with Al Young's dynamic, soulful readings of more than 20 of the poems from the book, plus Langston Hughes? reading of his classic ?The Weary Blues.? Many of Young's performances feature a live blues band.