American Literature / Unit 13 AML 1227 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading the Blues Stanza
The idea
Blues-derived poems appear on the exam and are recognized by three features. First, the stanza shape: a line, a repetition of that line with a small variation, and a third line that responds, which is the pattern Hughes takes directly from sung blues. Second, the voice: a first-person speaker in colloquial speech, usually naming an ordinary trouble, money, love, work or weariness, and refusing self-pity. Third, the function of repetition: in a blues stanza the repeated line is not emphasis but time, the space in which a singer decides what the third line will be. A reader who treats the repetition as mere emphasis will miss why the answering line lands.
In practice
Line, echo, answer.
Where people slip
Not every Hughes poem is a blues poem. "Harlem" is a series of questions and "I, Too" is a direct address, and neither uses the stanza, so the form has to be checked rather than assumed.
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