When I attempted to research my piece, there was no data or information to speak of (unlike Joshua's piece and others) For example, when I tried to look up "long pocket" there was no information and therefore I assumed it was a term specific to Negro culture. Also there were not many terms to research, so I ended up mostly doing a personal interpretation of my section.
SHOW FARE, PLEASE
5: IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES: Meaning "region, locality" is from c.1300. Meaning "portion of a town" (identified by the class or race of people who live there) is first attested 1526.
6: WHERE THE MASK IS PLACED BY OTHERS: A very strong and powerful image. Perhaps this refers to the idea that the white person does not see the Negro for who he is but sees what he wants to see with all the prejudices.
9: STRIP TICKETS: Tickets used to come in long strips from slots inside the box office.
16: WHERE THE LIGHTER IS THE DARKER: reference to white people?
20- 25 DID YOU EVER SEE TEN NEGROES
WEAVING METAL FROM TWO QUARTERS
INTO CLOTH OF DOLLARS
FOR A SUIT OF GOOD-TIME WEARING?
WEAVING OUT OF LONG-TERM CREDIT
INTEREST BEYOND CARING?
In the Larry Scanlon essay, he states: "The poem's final mood, SHOW FARE, PLEASE, returns to the quarter to assert the inexhaustibibility of African-American inventiveness in the face of economic privation. Economic relations are no less dependent than poetic tradition on structures of formal measurement. These lines equate improvised games of chance with the assumption of LONG TERM CREDIT and see in each a sort of resistance analogous to cultural expression, in that both are based on the manipulation of form. Yet these equivalences are by no means triumphalist."
26: THE HEADS ON THESE TWO QUARTERS: The coin is peculiar to U.S., first recorded 1783.
26: Langston Hughes plays around with the line: THE HEADS ON THESE TWO QUARTERS and references THE HOLY GHOST which is part of the Holy Trinity. I interpret the Holy Ghost as representing the Negro spirit. And when the child says:
31-33: OF THESE THREE.
IS ONE
ME?
It is with an ironic tone.
Note: In this last jazz piece, we are presented with a child pleading “FARE” from his mother who wants to go and see most probably a Charlie Parker show. The mother cannot afford the FARE, which again highlights the economic social deprivation of the Negro.
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A Reader's Guide
These annotations to Langston Hughes' long poem "Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz" are compiled and expanded each semester by students in Naropa University’s "Investigative Poetics" class, offered through the MFA Creative Writing low-residency program.
Annotations by Section
- Ask Your Mama (1)
- Bird in Orbit (1)
- Blues in Stereo (1)
- Cultural Exchange (1)
- Gospel of Cha-Cha (1)
- Horn of Plenty (1)
- Is It True (1)
- Jazztet Muted (1)
- Ode to Dinah (1)
- Ride Red Ride (1)
- Shades of Pigment (1)
- Show Fare Please (1)
2 comments:
long pocket – There’s a possible reading of “long pocket” that’s not dependent on this phrase being a Black colloquialism during the time Hughes was writing. In the OED, “Long purse” refers to wealth; Joyce used “long pocket” in “Ulysses” to indicate wealth (Colloquial Language in Ulysses,” R.W. Dent, pg. 98). As used in “Show Fare, Please ” “long purse” seems to work well, even if it’s not a Black colloquialism, as a painful statement highlighting the circumstance of a young child pleading for 30 cents his mother doesn’t have, and hoping his father might have the wealth, deep pockets, long purse, etc., to come up with the coins. It may also be emphasizing the question of where the child can find his due, for years what has been promised and held back.
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