Video Blues

From the title “Video Blues,” Salter clearly invokes the blues tradition, and an understanding of the blues tradition provides a deeper understanding of the poem itself. Beginning as a musical tradition, blues emerged after the Civil War as formerly enslaved African Americans migrated north. The roots of blues music can be found in a combination of field songs, church music, and elements of African rhythms. Rhyme, repetition, and rhythm are crucial elements of blues, as many songs were performed rhythmically while working. Thematically, blues songs are often about longing for home, longing for a loved one, hardship, and survival.

Blues became firmly entrenched as a formal poetic tradition in the United States during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s, especially with the publication of Langston Hughes’s first book, The Weary Blues, in 1926. While there is much variation in blues poetry, certain defining characteristics emerged. Much like its musical roots, blues poetry typically addresses topics of love, struggle, and despair. It often adheres to a form of three-line stanzas “in which a statement is made in the first line, a variation is given in the second line, and an ironic alternative is declared in the third line” (“

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