L357 assignment # [ver.2]

Summer Snows
Ala Langston Hughes

Winter weather can bring a young heart low, baby.
A weary heart needs a strong start when cold winds blow,
and with snow piling up, baby,  the broken one needs more.

Winter weather can bring a young heart low, baby.
And sometimes it’s found in the warmth as a closed door
that hides behind it, baby, your sweet sweet glow.

Winter weather can bring a young heart low, baby.
Yeah, winter weather can bring a young heart low.
What’s the chances of you helping me rise tonight?


Winter weather surrounds me, that’s fo sho, baby.
A weary heart needs a strong start when it swims for shore,
and with waves piling up, baby, the broken one needs more.

Winter weather surrounds me, that’s fo sho, baby.
But sometimes the silence calls to me, and i know,
that winter’s fine, baby, even if it’s not my home.

Winter weather surrounds me, that’s for sho, baby.
Yeah, winter weather surrounds me, that’s for sho.
What’s the chances of you chillin’ wit me tonight?

 

Lagnston Hughes uses the line, punctuation and formatting to create a musical continuity that works to transform the oftentimes sorrowful subject matter of his poetry of the streets, of streets that ran deep as rivers and occasionally red with the shed tears of his fellows. He transformed Eliot’s Waste Lands into quick lyrics, powerful and poignant, pointed as the spears that pierced the side of ‘Christ in Alabama,’ somewhat distanced from the goreiest of the details, but fully immersed in the reality of it all.

His language has a bounce and step to it that provides the rhythm, melody, and vocals for his silent songs. That, combined with his treatment of line and line breaks, and his use of italics and CAPITILIZATION work to keep the eye and mind moving, through the sometimes disturbing, often cutting edge, perspectives encapsulated in Hughes’ poetry.