MELODIES OF THE WEARY BLUES

This collection, illustrated by 23 Black artists, highlights recurring themes that appear throughout Hughes’ work: night, water, dreams, Harlem, jazz, Blackness.

Editor Knight-Justice, who contributes two illustrations, explains in a note that at age 14, Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son” not only introduced him to poetry’s rich possibilities, but deepened his understanding of his relationship with his own mother. He writes, “This is what poetry did for me, and I want it to do the same for you.” Some poems receive double-page spreads, while others, thematically aligned, appear on facing pages. “Dream Variation,” like other selections, sees night as a solace—a warm, positive reflection of Blackness: “Then rest at cool evening / Beneath a tall tree / While night comes on gently, / Dark like me— / That is my dream!” The facing poem, “Harlem Night Song,” invites a loved one to roam nighttime streets pulsing with jazz. To visually unify the project, the artists adopt a palette of blues and purples accented with warm yellows, oranges, and the varied skin tones of the mainly Black and Brown children and adults that enliven each spread. Styles vary, from Islenia Mil’s sepia-rich nightclub scene for “Jazzonia” and Janelle Washington’s stylized seascape for “Long Trip” to Frank Morrison’s epic painting for “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” in which families aboard a wooden craft struggle amid high waves below a stormy sky.

Well-chosen poems and spirited illustrations celebrate the legacy of a Harlem Renaissance luminary.