Blues poems / selected and edited by Kevin Young.

STANDARDS (Blues poems before World War II): Langston Hughes: The weary blues
Morning after
Beale street love
Song for a dark girl
Midwinter blues
Too blue
Note on commercial theatre
Tired / Fenton Johnson
The harlem dancer / Claude McKay
Memory blues / Nancy Cunard
Colored blues singer / Countee Cullen
Ma Rainey / Sterling Brown
Choices / Sterling Brown
High brown / Nicolas Guillen
Sootie Joe / Melvin B. Tolson
Street-level jazz / Maxwell Bodenheim
Blues / W. H. Auden
Funeral blues / W. H. Auden
George Robinson: Blues / Muriel Rukeyser
Ndesse, or "Blues' / Leopold Senghor
Guitar / Owen Dodson
Blue stanzas / Charles Edward Smith
Red clay blues / Richard Wright and Langston Hughes
The F B eye blues / Richard Wright
Dicty blues / Vincent McHugh
Waring cuney: Down-home boy
Carry me back
Let me tell you blues singers something
Queen of the blues / Gwendolyn Brooks
SOME SONGS: St. Louis blues / W. C. Handy
Crazy blues / Mamie Smith
See see rider blues / Ma Rainey
Bessie Smith: Empty bed blues
Backwater blues
Gimme a pigfoot
Wil women don't have the blues / Ida Cox
Trouble in mind / Richard M. Jones
Jesus make up my dying bed / Blind Willie Johnson
Death letter blues / Son House
Robert Johnson: Kindhearted woman blues
Hellhound on my trail
Love in vain
Sent for you yesterday / Jimmy Rushing
Good morning blues / Leadbelly
Hoochie coochie man / Muddy waters
Hound dog / Big Mama Thorton
FORM: You know / Jayne Cortez
Look for you yesterday, here you come today / Amiri Baraka
Sonia Sanchez: Blues
Blues haikus
Set. no. 2
Master charge blues / Nikki Giovanni
Inflation blues / Margaret Walker
Woke up crying the blues / Quincy Troupe
Letter: blues / Elizabeth Alexander
Cheating woman blues haiku / A. Van Jordan
Feeling fucked up / Etheridge Knight
FACING OFF: The blues / James C. Morris
Married blues / Kenneth Rexroth

Lonesome boy blues / Kenneth Patchen
Concentration camp blues / Henry Dumas
Outer space blues / Henry Dumas
Blues / Derek Walcott
Reservation blues / Sherman Alexie
Bilingual blues / Gustavo Perez Firmat
Blues on yellow / Marilyn Chin
Blue / Carl Phillip's
Deep song / Gayl Jones
Soledad / Calvin Forbes
Some pieces / Calvin Forbes
Broom song / Darrell Burton
Sickness blues / Allen Ginsberg
Bad mother blues / Sandra McPherson
Rambling / Afaa M. Weaver
Uncle bull-boy / June Jordan
Get away 1928 / Tracie Morris
Joe Chappel's foot log bottom blues 1952 / Sean Hill
Swing shift blues / Alan Dugan
The blues / Billy Collins
FIGURES: Any woman's blues / Sherley Anne Williams
Cornelius Eady: I'm a fool to love you
Muddy waters & the Chicago blues
Leadbelly / Langston Hughes / Kevin Young
Song for Langston / Willie Perdomo
Muddy waters / Sterling Plump
Big Mama Thorton / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Poems almost wholly in my own manner / Charles Wright
Dream song [no.40] / John Berryman
John Berryman listening to Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues, January 1972 / David Wojahn
Arrival / Forrest Hamer
Not guilty / David Rivard
Bulosan listens to a recording of Robert Johnson / Alfred Encarnacion
FREIGHT: The blues don't change / Al Young
Cinderella / G. E. Patterson
Yusef Komunyakaa: Annabelle
For you, sweetheart, I'll sell plutonium reactors
Woman, I got the blues
Hard-luck resume / Catherine Bowman
Gone away blues / Thomas McGrath
Broken back blues / Robert Creeley
Blues / Joseph Brodsky
Narcissus blues / William Matthews
Special pain blues / Raymond R. Patterson
Blackbottom / Toi Dorricotte
How to listen / Major Jackson
Wanda blues / Jane Cooper
From Aubades / Albert Murray
At the station / Natasha Trethewey
Nosferatu blues / Jeff Fallis
Bed music / Charles Simic
Domestic bliss / John Yau
Blues for Hal Waters / Bob Kaufman
Heavy water blues / Bob Kaufman


Heavy daughter blues / Wanda Coleman
The things-no-one-knows blues / Terrance Hayes
The encyclopedia of rhythm and blues / Anthony Walton
FINALE (For Bessie Smith): Bessie / Alvin Aubert
Homage to the empress of the blues / Robert Hayden
Twelve bar Bessie / Jackie Kay
Blues for Bessie / Myron O'Higgins
Bessie Smith / Waring Cuney
Mae West chats it up with Bessie Smith / Colleen J. McElroy
Last affair: Bessie's blues song / Michael Harper.