Trumpet Player
by Langston Hughes
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See Also
- Langston Hughes (Critical Survey of Poetry: American Poets)
- Langston Hughes (Cyclopedia of World Authors, Fourth Revised Edition)
- Langston Hughes (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
- Langston Hughes (Identities & Issues in Literature)
- Langston Hughes (Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Langston Hughes
- First Published: 1947
- Type of Poem: 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 1830 words.)
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