Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Available online – Lehigh University

This, Hughes’s second poetry collection, is different from the first in that it leans more heavily into blues music structure and into dialectal language use. It’s not that these didn’t feature in Weary Blues, but in this collection one can read most of the poems with a blues shuffle riff playing in one’s head (and, if you do, you will hear how Muddy Waters might have belted them out in a Blues club.)

While it’s fun to read, this collection is not nearly so deep or evocative as the collection that preceded. Still, if you like poetry and / or the Blues, you’ll definitely find this to be a worthwhile read.

View all my reviews