The Blues
A truly American poetic form, the blues is defined as “a music of mournful and haunting character, originating among Negroes of the Southern U.S., freq. in a twelve bar sequence using many ‘blue’ notes.” (pg. 188) If you have ever listened to the blues before, you know that the soulfulness of the music gives you that feeling of genuine heartbreak. The form of the blues is what allows the feeling of anguish and sorrow to be conveyed. The “classic” blues lyric stanza is composed of three lines of iambic pentameter, rhymed AAa, each with a caesura. But there are many variations of the AAa rhyme pattern, as well as rhyme scheme. Some blues poets use the third line of the opening stanza as the refrain for succeeding stanzas. Other variations include rhyming each of the three lines with a different word, and using four lines in a stanza instead of the traditional three. No matter how it is written, the blues form “is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.” (Ellison, pg. 189)
The most essential part of blues form is repetition. The first line of the stanza makes a statement that is repeated in the second line, sometimes with modifications. When the lines are repeated without modification, it emphasizes the speaker’s state of mind, and suggests “a willingness to repeatedly confront and accurately state a painful circumstance.” (pg. 189) When the repeated line is altered by a few words or the arrangement, the repetition acts as a rhythmic or sound device. This repetition originated from late-nineteenth-century southern rural field hollers. The repetition of the first line reflects the delay in the call from the field holler, since it had to travel a long distance. And then finally, the third line is the blues response which the first two lines called out for. The blues form itself embodies the horrible times of slavery, so it makes sense that it is used to convey feelings of pain and suffering. The main subjects of the blues include unhappy love, difficult times, hard luck, fruitless labor, and rootlessness.
In Ishmael Reed’s heartbreaking ‘Oakland Blues’, he writes about the loss of a loved one. In the first stanza, he sets the scene of the poem with the opening line “Well it’s six o’clock in Oakland and the sun is full of wine.” (pg. 193) A dark red sunset gives the poem an ominous tone. He then uses the third line to tell readers of the tragic event; “We buried you this morning, baby in the shadow of a vine.” (pg. 193) The repeated line in the second stanza is used to explain the cause of her death by saying “Well they told you of the sickness almost eighteen months ago.” (pg. 193) In blues form, the language and story is simple, direct, and resonant. He completes the stanza with the sorrowful line “You went down fighting, daddy. Yes you fought Death toe to toe.” (pg. 193) Notice how the D in death is capitalized, personifying it as well as putting an emphasis on it since it is what the entire poem is about. In the final stanza, the speaker expresses feelings of loneliness now that their loved one is gone. They repeat the line “O, it’s hard to come home, baby, to a house that’s still and stark” (pg. 194), and finish the poem with “All I hear is myself thinking and footsteps in the dark.” (pg. 194) This poem radiates a melancholic tone, and is even more heartbreaking because the speaker is talking directly to the person who has passed away, which tells readers that they do not want to let go and admit that they are really dead. These feelings of loss, melancholy, tragedy and sorrow are what embodies the blues form.
Patterson, Raymond R. “The Blues.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Eds. Annie Finch & Katherine Varnes. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002.
