Poetry Explication and Analysis Essay: The Trumpet Player
Part 1: Scansion and Analysis
Langston Hughes is a very famous poet and literary writer. “The Trumpet Player”, a poem by Langston Hughes, successfully displays and shows the importance of musical expression specifically in the African American community. “The Trumpet Player” is a literary musically influenced jazz poem. This poem contains five stanzas, including eight lines in each stanza, as well as a four-line coda. “The Trumpet Player” is an artistically oriented poem and is written in the spirit of a jazz poem, such as “Jazzonia” and “Jazztet Mutet”. The scene of this poem is located at a bar with a trumpet player on the stage telling his story by playing his instrument (Jordan). …show more content…
The theme is very evident in this poem as Hughes opens the poem as he state, “The Negro”, informing the readers that the person in this poem is an African American. Hughes also discusses the African American race as he states, “Has dark moons of weariness/ beneath his eyes/ where the smoldering memory/ of slave ships/ blazed to the crack of whips/ about thighs” (stanza 1). Hughes expresses the memories of slavery as he describes the slave ships and the whippings that African Americans had to sustain and eventually …show more content…
Hughes states, “The music/ from the trumpet at his lips/ is honey/ mixed with liquid fire/ the rhythm/ from the trumpet at his lips/ is ecstasy/ distilled from old desire” (stanza 3). Hughes explains the therapeutic relief of playing the trumpet in order to forget the pain from the past. He explains that the mixture of the sweet and hot music creates the opposite emotion than the man was feeling, which is happiness. Hughes continues as he states, “It’s hypodermic needle/ to his soul/ but softly/ as the tune comes from his throat/ trouble/ mellows to a golden note” (stanza 6). Hughes describes the way the music is relaxing as he explains the music being underneath him, in an literal sense, therefore soothing him. This shows that the man is being relieved of the burden that he carried because of the painful past, described in the first stanza, due to playing his trumpet as a musical
Part 1: Scansion and Analysis
Langston Hughes is a very famous poet and literary writer. “The Trumpet Player”, a poem by Langston Hughes, successfully displays and shows the importance of musical expression specifically in the African American community. “The Trumpet Player” is a literary musically influenced jazz poem. This poem contains five stanzas, including eight lines in each stanza, as well as a four-line coda. “The Trumpet Player” is an artistically oriented poem and is written in the spirit of a jazz poem, such as “Jazzonia” and “Jazztet Mutet”. The scene of this poem is located at a bar with a trumpet player on the stage telling his story by playing his instrument (Jordan). …show more content…
The theme is very evident in this poem as Hughes opens the poem as he state, “The Negro”, informing the readers that the person in this poem is an African American. Hughes also discusses the African American race as he states, “Has dark moons of weariness/ beneath his eyes/ where the smoldering memory/ of slave ships/ blazed to the crack of whips/ about thighs” (stanza 1). Hughes expresses the memories of slavery as he describes the slave ships and the whippings that African Americans had to sustain and eventually …show more content…
Hughes states, “The music/ from the trumpet at his lips/ is honey/ mixed with liquid fire/ the rhythm/ from the trumpet at his lips/ is ecstasy/ distilled from old desire” (stanza 3). Hughes explains the therapeutic relief of playing the trumpet in order to forget the pain from the past. He explains that the mixture of the sweet and hot music creates the opposite emotion than the man was feeling, which is happiness. Hughes continues as he states, “It’s hypodermic needle/ to his soul/ but softly/ as the tune comes from his throat/ trouble/ mellows to a golden note” (stanza 6). Hughes describes the way the music is relaxing as he explains the music being underneath him, in an literal sense, therefore soothing him. This shows that the man is being relieved of the burden that he carried because of the painful past, described in the first stanza, due to playing his trumpet as a musical