Hi folks,
As you read the opening poems in Montage of a Dream Deferred, keep the sense of the musical and aesthetic in your mind. Here, courtesy of wikipedia, is Hughes's original preface to the collection that gives a little sense of the musical inspiration for some of his language, sound, and organizational choices:
In terms of current Afro-American popular music and the sources from which it progressed--jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-bop--this poem on contemporary Harlem, like be-bop, is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the manner of a jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the riffs, runs, breaks, and disc-tortions of the music of a community in transition.
So put on some jazz and be-bop and get reading!
Best
Dr. R
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