"Homesick Blues" and "Tin Roof
"Homesick Blues", written by Langston Hughes in 1926 towards the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, and "Tin Roof Blues", written by Sterling A. Brown in 1931 towards the end of the Harlem Renaissance, are two woeful poems that both make use of the basic form and elements of the blues. On a broader level, they have the same theme of migration and their speakers express similar motivations for and desires of migration. The poems' major symbol, the train, is also similar in shape and significance. Although historically, jazz, not the blues is associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the writers of the movement celebrated the musical styling of the blues in their poetry. "Homesick Blues" and "Tin Roof Blues" are perfect examples of this. Brown's "Tin Roof Blues" is written in the more traditional blues form: three lines of four beats each per verse/stanza with the first line of each verse/stanza repeated twice and followed by a third end-rhymed line. For example, the first stanza of the poem reads: "I'm goin' where de Southern crosses top de C.
Despite the fact that Hughes' "Homesick Blues" and Brown's "Tin Roof Blues" were written, respectively, at the beginning and the end of the Harlem Renaissance, they are very similar. It almost seems as though the writer's of the renaissance didn't make much progress, but to make such an assumption based upon two pieces is unfair, especially when it so happens that "Homesick Blues" and "Tin Roof Blues" are written by two men that had established themselves as the two major folk poets of the renaissance who had similar objectives for their writing, and, subsequently, often similar styling. Thus, it might be better to say that the Harlem Renaissance came full circle from the time "Homesick Blues" was written in 1926 to when "Tin Roof Blues" was written six years later. The classic symbol of migration during the early twentieth century was the train, which is central to the theme of migration in both "Tin Roof Blues" and "Homesick Blues". In the sense that migrating South represents for the speakers of the poems an opportunity to escape their
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Approximate Word count = 707
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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