"Hop Mr. Bunny, Skip Mr. BearIf you don't dig this party you ain't no where!"The place was Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s. Rents were high and wages were low for many African Americans and one way they came together to fight the injustice and to raise the rent money was to hold rent parties.Refreshments and music were provided and they printed up these neat cards to promote the evenings.When Langston Hughes moved to Harlem he was already familiar with the rent party scene from his days writing for the Chicago Defender. He would eventually put together "quite a collection"...
Portraits of Modern American Poets
Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss, circa 1925. Pastel on illustration board. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.You know if the National Portrait Gallery is going to hold an exhibit featuring the portraits of poets it's going to be a good one."Poetic License: Modern American Poets " pays homage to over 50 poets and includes over 75 works.Walt Whitman. G. Frank E. Pearsall, 1872. Albumen silver print. Courtesy the National Portrait GalleryThe exhibit looks at the partnership of poets and artists in the creation of modern culture.The core seeds of the exhibit are Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound and it all...
Wall Street Bank For Poets Proposed. Never Too Big To Fail?
There are many contenders for Top Dog status in the bone yard of bonehead ideas. [Provide favorite to Comments]. In the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, the highest honors for magnificently cockeyed excogitations belonged to one known only as the Idiot.The Idiot, the creation of Harpers humor editor, John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), whose Idiot confections were collected into six volumes*, was a boarder in Mrs. Smithers-Pegagog’s High-Class Home for Single Gentlemen. I’m always anxious to learn as much as I can about the history of the fleabag with a foyer and threadbare lace doilies I currently call home, so,...