Dreams

"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes (1925)

Hughes was a central member of the Harlem Renaissance, and “The Weary Blues,” as with Giovanni’s “Dreams,” centers around race and music. In Giovanni’s poem, the speaker’s younger self dreams of becoming a singer in the Raelettes. In Hughes’s poem, the speaker watches a blues musician in a dilapidated space.

Both poems express melancholy, and Hughes’s poem explicitly portrays the sadness of the Black performer. The blues musician is weary and unhappy. He wishes he was dead. The miserable life of the blues singer reinforces the wisdom of Giovanni’s speaker, who chose to become something more sensible than an entertainer.

“Knoxville, Tennessee” by Nikki Giovanni (1968)

Like “Dreams,” “Knoxville, Tennessee” appeared in Black Judgement. It’s an autobiographical, well-known poem, and Giovanni’s speaker has much in common with Giovanni. Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and her grandparents lived there.

As with “Dreams,” “Knoxville, Tennessee” has an exuberant and innocent tone. The poem uses repetition and repeats “and” to convey the joyous rush of things the speaker can eat and do in Knoxville. Like “Dreams,” the poem doesn’t stop for stanza breaks—it’s one big stanza.

"Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)" by Gwendolyn Brooks (1991)