Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz.

HUGHES, Langston.

Item Number: 129806

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.

First edition of Hughes’ masterful work of jazz poetry, dedicated to Louis Armstrong. Octavo, original half cloth and illustrated boards. Typography, binding, and jacket design by Vincent Torre. Presentation copy, lengthily inscribed by Langston Hughes in the year of publication, “Especially for Bill ~ my latest ~ Sincerely ~ Langston Harlem, U.S.A., October, 1961.” Very good in the rare original dust jacket which is in very good condition.

One of the most celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance, poet, novelist and social activist Langston Hughes is widely considered one of the most important American writers of the 20th century. Through his poetry and fiction, Hughes sought not only to portray the experience of working-class blacks in America, but redefine, expand, and celebrate African American identity. This purpose he summed up in a one-sentence summary of his life’s goal in response to a request from Who’s Who in America: “My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind” (Rampersand, 418). In a language bursting with sound and rhythm - angry, blue, fiercely ironic, funny, and haunting - Langston Hughes has unleashed here a sequence of brilliant jazz poetry including, in addition to Ask Your Mama, Ode to Dinah, Blues in Stereo, Gospel Cha-Cha, and Bird in Orbit. Hughes dedicated the volume to Louis Armstrong, "the greatest horn blower of them all".