Trumpet Player (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Langston Hughes
- First Published: 1947
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
The Poem
Originally published as “Trumpet Player: 52nd Street,” Langston Hughes’s “Trumpet Player” is a literary jazz poem consisting of five eight-line stanzas and a four-line coda. It is one of a body of Hughes’s musically oriented poems and is written in the spirit of his jazz poems, such as “Jazzonia” and “Jazztet Muted.” The setting is a bar where a trumpeter is on stage playing his instrument, telling his story—aspects of the personal and collective African American experience in the United States. The poem describes the musician, his music, and its...
[The entire page is 1609 words long]
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