The Poetry of the Blues

This essay seeks to use the wider society’s first glimpse of the blues in W. C. Handy’s Father of the Blues as an image to sketch the character of the genre. I wrote it as the introductory chapter to a book of my essays on blues lyrics as poetry, many of which are posted on this site.



     Some of the finest twentieth century American poetry appeared neither in little magazines nor in books from literary or academic presses. The poetry of the blues was sung on front porches and in juke joints in some of the poorest and least educated regions of the country. In fact, it was specifically in such areas that the blues could flourish as could other traditional forms of oral poetry such as Appalachian ballads and Cajun song.
     In the Mississippi Delta gifted poet-musicians created a body of work that continues to move listeners both through recordings of the original artists and the countless others whom they influenced. The power of their poetry is best experienced in performance, but the strength of their lyrics as poetry emerges more dramatically in transcriptions on the page. Close readings of classic blues songs depend on a sophisticated system of conventions which the artist may observe or flout, but which have the precision and expressive power of troubadour cansos or Elizabethan sonnets.
     The subtlety and complexity of this signifying system allowed the singers to express the themes most central to the psyche in profound and beautiful verses. The primary topic of the blues is sexual love, the most powerful human desire, though the songs also engage alienation and mortality. The emotional range of the blues is wide. Though the melancholy heart’s cry predominates, some blues songs are high-spirited, even rollicking, which others have a tone of confidence or contentment.
     The orthodox origin myth of the blues is well-known. In his autobiography in 1941, W. C. Handy describes hearing a ragged man in the train station at Tutwiler, Mississippi who played slide guitar and made the “weirdest” music he had ever heard while singing the repeated line: “Goin’ where the Southern cross’ the Dog.” Handy understood the phrase to refer simply to the man’s destination, the town of Moorhead, at the intersection of the Southern Railroad and the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley line sometimes called the Yazoo Delta or the “Yellow Dog.” The reference to such a crossroad has the functional purpose of using a landmark rare in a flat agricultural district, but that literal meaning is simply the foundation for a more significant complex of connotation from which may be spun a characterization of the blues themselves.
     The energy, the passion, even the “weirdness” of the song Handy heard suggest semantic trajectories beyond the simply geographical. In Handy’s own “Yellow Dog Blues” the poem expresses love-longing as the singer finds her lover has fled and has “gone where the Southern cross' the Yellow Dog.” [1] Here the intersection is less a specific location than simply indicating a place inaccessibly far away. Indeed, in most of the songs that later use the same phrase it signifies the distance distant between the singer and the love-object, and thus the phrase bears commonly a plaintive edge of lament. The utterance of the original singer in Tutwiler is obscure given the scarcity of data, but it is clear that he is expressing some heartfelt suffering associated with separation. In Handy’s usage the pangs of love-longing are explicit and foregrounded.
     Loneliness, though, is not always the inverse of romance. A feeling of lost desolation may be existential as well as situational and the bereft tones of blues songs have long spoken to listeners in a wide variety of suffering. If many blues songs are, in fact, laments or complaints, this is because the world is, as Christians say, a “vale of tears,” or, in the first of the Buddha’s four noble truths, life is suffering.
     Though the singer looked like a vagrant (probably especially so to the fastidious Handy), he was far from aping popular white musical styles as a great many black entertainers have done in all periods. His song sounded strange because it was a creole form using African elements of which the artist was well aware. He was in a sense an underground rebel, impudently asserting his own music in the center of a hostile Jim Crow culture. Local railroad slang -- “Yellow Dog,” “North Dog,” “Cannonball,” “Peavine” – was primarily used by the black workers, so the lexical choice as well is assertively African-American.
     The steam locomotives were spectacles and the railroad company’s properties reflected that industrial sector’s great strength, both mechanical and financial. The intersection of two rail lines, an intensification of a highway crossroad, seemed a nexus of power. Any such point suggests a point of decision, a choice of routes in life as in the motif of Herakles at the crossroads of virtue and vice. More broadly in many traditions including the New World belief systems derived from Yoruba, crossroads suggest a point of contact between human and divine realms. [2] In the context of blues history one cannot avoid the supernatural associations that lend such power to Robert Johnson’s prayer at the crossroads in “Cross Road Blues.”
     Though Handy was, by his own declaration, ignorant of the blues, and his experience was not only fragmentary but also accidental, these terms together construct the distinctive semantic field that characterizes the blues. They are often focused on the theme of suffering, alienation, and a consciousness of mortality, and on a dramatic enactment of the power of Eros. The songs are expressed in a purely American creolized form that mixes African and European musical conventions and employs subcultural slang. At times a scent of the divine or of the diabolic lingers in the air.
     The generic development over a period of time generated a rich inventory of conventions and thus an equal number of ways to negate or twist or develop those conventions, leading to increased signifying potential. The code was rendered denser yet by the African-American perspective which lent it a hip DuBoisian “double consciousness.” The signifying monkey, though a figure in toasts rather than blues songs, is an apt emblem for the cunning indirections of African-American poetry and, indeed, of all artful use of language.
     Since adolescence I have been as captivated by the sound of the blues as W. C. Handy was upon hearing the anonymous musician. I am convinced that listeners’ appreciation of the lyrics of singers like Son House and Charlie Patton would benefit from close critical reading no less than sonnets by Spenser and Sidney. I, like any reader of blues songs on the printed page, will return to the recorded performances, of course, in which the addition of expressive music, phrasing, and tone contribute to the uniquely American beauty of these extraordinary poems. Anyone who has ever felt abandoned and lost, or altogether in love, or simply lusty has experienced the blues. Anyone susceptible to poetry can feel the power of the blues in these masterful American songs.



1. See W. C. Handy, Father of the Blues. With only this snatch of the anonymous singer’s song, his meaning remains unknown. In their general narrative outline, Handy’s later lyrics are a reply to Shelton Brooks’ “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone” (1913) which uses racetrack imagery and makes no reference to trains. The versions of “Yellow Dog Blues” by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith follow Handy closely.

2. Crossroads are associated with Odin, Hekate, Hermes, and other deities. In late medieval and early modern times, suicides and sometimes murderers as well were buried at crossroads.

The Orphic Hymn to Hekate

The Orphic Hymn to Hekate

 

 

Εἰνοδίην Ἑκάτην κλῄιζω, τριοδῖτιν, ἐραννήν,

οὐρανίην, χθονίαν τε, καὶ εἰναλίην κροκόπεπλον,

τυμβιδίην, ψυχαῖς νεκύων μέτα βακχεύουσαν,

Πέρσειαν, φιλέρημον, ἀγαλλομένην ἐλάφοισιν,

νυκτερίην, σκυλακῖτιν, ἀμαιμάκετον βασίλειαν,

ταυροπόλον, παντὸς κόσμου κληιδοῦχον ἄνασσαν,

ἡγεμόνην, νύμφην, κουροτρόφον, οὐρεσιφοῖτιν,

λισσόμενοις κούρην τελεταῖς ὁσίαισι παρεῖναι

βουκόλῳ εὐμενέουσαν ἀεὶ κεχαρηότι θυμῷ.

 

 

O Hecate of crossroads, come to me!

You rule sky, earth, and sea in saffron robes.

At home among the dead you wildly dance,

o Persian, fond of solitude and deer!

Unconquerable queen of dogs and night,

bull-mistress, key to all the cosmos, queen!

O nymph who nurtures babes and rules the hills,

We pray you, lady, see our sacrifice,

enjoy the incense, smile upon your shepherd

 

 

     The Orphic hymns have been rather neglected by admirers of ancient poetry. They are still to find a place in the Loeb’s Library series and they have attracted very few translators [1] and little comment. Ignoring the priorities of scholarship, though, neo-pagans have adopted the poems, sometimes with the hope that the verses retain magic efficacy. In fact, from the time of their composition these poems have been found in contexts of ritual and cult rather than of literature. For that reason they yield accurate information about ancient religious practice. Yet such data are sometimes self-contradictory. Often, like the book of Genesis, such texts are collages of materials added at different times or for different purposes.

     The book of hymns opens with an invocation to Musaios, the legendary son of Orpheus considered the founder of religious poetry in Greece. Just as in the Indian Vedas, the priestly concern is to define sacrificial procedures. Musaeus is asked to attend “to learn what rites to sacrifice belong,” and only then does the poet invoke a long list of deities including all the Olympians with the exception of Aphrodite as well as a raft of other deities. [2] It looks rather as though the author were anxious not to pass over any powerful figure that might resent the omission. [3]

     The fact that Hekate is the first divinity to receive more than a mention may relate to her role in Orphism which, like most of the other mystery cults of the ancient world as well, is salvationist, promising devotees eternal life. Hekate is often conflated with Diana, Demeter, and Proserpine. Each of these deities has to do with the renewal of life, the first through the annual cycle of animal and vegetable rebirth and the second and third through myths involving their visiting the world of the dead and returning.

     Orphism and Hekate have also strong ties to Dionysos, another deity associated with death and rebirth. Hekate is said to do specifically Bacchic dances, and Orphism is Thracian in origin, as is Sabazios the chief Thracian deity, depicted on horseback, but later identified with Dionysos. [4] Another god absorbed within Dionysos’ cult in antiquity is Zagreus who was identified with rites in which sacrificial animals were torn to pieces and eaten raw reenacting Dionysos’ omophagia by the Titans. Orpheus and Dionysos have in common the pattern of death and rebirth which encourages the worshipper to hope for a similar individual victory over death. [5]

     Hecate is thus woven into a mythic texture preoccupied with rebirth. The fact that her powers are regarded as a gift from Zeus implies her receptiveness in turn to the requests of pious petitioners, and, in fact, this hymn is a prayer, seeking to establish contact with the deity in order to ask for favor. The incense mentioned in the last line is an inducement, as is the praise implicit in the catalogue of divine attributes. This catalogue of titles formally resembles such Catholic prayers as the invocation to Mary called the Litany of Loreto.

     The goddess’ epithets define a capacious but not boundless identity. Of the eighteen attributes in this rhetoric of the divine four are simple honorifics, calling attention to the status of the deity and: leader (ἡγεμόνην), irresistible, (ἀμαιμάκετον), queen (βασίλειαν), and nymph (νύμφην). Her governance in land, sea, and air is sanctioned by Hesiod. [6]

     The terms queen and nymph acknowledge her femininity and draw on the archaic worship of the earth goddess typical of the Neolithic era, assigning Hekate governance of the world of nature. This realm of governance is elaborated as frequenter of mountain wilds (οὐρεσιφοῖτιν), protector of dogs (σκυλακῖτιν), delighting in deer (ἀγαλλομένην ἐλάφοισιν), and bull mistress (ταυροπόλον) [7]. Her association with the earth’s vital energy and the flourishing of game and wild animals in general leads to her role as nurturer of children (κουροτρόφον), [8]

     She is associated in general with hidden things, mysteries signified by solitude (φιλέρημον) and the night (νυκτερίην), and this, together with her role as an intercessor for humans, suggests that she is at home among the dead (τυμβιδίην). Her identification as a witch and her role as an aid in magic arises from this nexus.

     She is identified with crossroads (Εἰνοδίην), in particular with locations where three roads meet (τριοδῖτιν). Americans will think of Robert Johnsons’ “Cross Road Blues” in which the singer prays at a crossroad. Though the interpretation of Johnson’s lyrics remains disputed, it is likely that the setting derives its supernatural associations from the Yoruba orisha Eshu [9]. The tripling parallels Hekate’s representation in art as three figures as well as recalling another figure depicted as three and associated with crossroads and with magic, Diana Trivia. [10] In the most general sense, crossroads suggest boundaries, including the liminal space between heaven and earth, as well as decision points as in the motif of Hercules at the crossroads.

     What I have rendered as Hekate’s saffron robes is in Greek crocus robes (κροκόπεπλον) which recalls the mortal Krokus who, in a doubling of the story of Apollo and Hyakinthus, was transformed into the flower after Hermes accidentally kills him or, in a different version, after he is disappointed in his love for the nymph Smilax. An archaic Minoan fresco on Santorini show women in such crocus/saffron robes gathering the stigmas and offering them to a goddess. Here, too, the focus is on the borderline between human and divine.

     The epithet Πέρσειαν has nothing to do with Persia, but rather refers simply to Hekate’s father, the Titan Perses. [11] Her influence over “sky, earth, and sea” is thus an example of particular favor from Zeus. Her devotees seek to share her auspicious good fortune through seeking her intercession.

     I have noted already the association with Dionysos implied when the goddess is said to dance wildly using the verb βακχεύουσαν which contains Bakkhos’ name and can be used simply to mean to observe his rites. He, like Hekate, is an intercessor deity, who in the account of his myth adopted by the Orphics actually died and was reborn.

     Perhaps Hekate’s followers, like the goddess herself, performed frenzied dances under divine enthusiasm. In these ecstasies, they may have tasted what they were promised by other salvationist cults, eternal blessedness. Indeed the ancient mysteries may have resembled nothing so much as a Pentecostal service.

     A disjuncture exists between the mythic identity of the goddess, though, and the personal prayer. On the one hand the goddess is conceived as the utterly other divine, that which cannot be controlled, linked to death and the eternal turning of the cosmic wheel, while, on the other hand, she has the role of potential grantor of poignant wishes such as those for life after death or for children or riches or the defeat of one’s enemies on the other. A similar pattern exists in other traditions as well. One may see the desire that Buddha sought to overcome embodied in the offerings, often junk foods like Mallomars, offered at his temples. The great gods of the ancient Near East who gather like flies to consume Utnapishtim’s blood sacrifice after the flood resemble the hungry and impotent dead Odysseus attracts with his. Thus while humans seek to obtain the divine gift of immortality, they also endow their gods with an all-too-human desire.

 

 

 

1. In 1787 Thomas Taylor published The Mystical Initiations or Hymns of Orpheus, with a preliminary Dissertation on the Life and Theology of Orpheus. Taylor was a Neoplatonist for whom these texts had a genuine spiritual appeal when read symbolically. He set it as his goal to translate all the untranslated works of the ancient philosophers. A modern translation of The Orphic Hymns was published by Apostolos N. Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow with an introduction and notes. A version by Stephen Dunn “for the occult practitioner” has also appeared.

 

2. The list includes others gods such as Proserpine, Hades, Dionysos, and Hebe; natural objects such as Gaia, Helios, Mene and the Brontoi; and abstractions such as Eileithyia, Dikaisyne, Eusebia, and Mnemosyne.

 

3. As, for instance, the evil fairy in Perrault’s “La belle au bois dormant.”

 

4. Curiously, Valerius Maximus, Plutarch, and others describe the Jews as worshippers of Dionysos through confusing the name Sabazios with the Hebrew sabaos (of the hosts”).

 

5. To Bertrand Russell (History of Western Philosophy) Pythagoras was a reformer of Orphism as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus.

 

6. Theogony 411 ff.

 

7. The exact meaning is uncertain. It may be associated with bull-herding or driving a bull cart or bull-fighting (perhaps bull-leaping or ταυροκαθάψια as practiced in ancient Crete).

 

8. An epithet she shares with Artemis, Eirena, and Hestia.

 

9. Eshu is also called Èṣù-Elegba and, in the New World Legba and number of variations. He is identified with crossroads, gateways and highways. A trickster, he represents in part the chance element in life. Among other gods also associated with crossroads are Hermes and Herakles and Odin. It would be natural to consider the Christian cross as signifying the meeting place of the divine and human planes.

 

10. Trivia is the earliest recorded epithet for Diana. She is often represented in art as a triple goddess as Hekate is as well. The factor of three is sometimes glossed as suggesting Diana’s three functions: huntress (earth), moon (heaven), and underworld. In Seneca’s play about her Medea calls on Trivia to accomplish her spell.

 

11. The name of Hekate’s Titan father Perses is related to πέρθω meaning to sack or destroy.