Think about the two specific stanzas that the blues singer sings in "The Weary Blues." What happens in each of the stanzas? How does the contrast between the two songs reinforce the overall theme of the poem?

The speaker of Langston Hughes's "The Weary Blues" describes an evening of listening to a blues musician in Harlem. With its diction, its repetition of lines and its inclusion of blues lyrics, the poem evokes the mournful tone and tempo of blues music and gives readers an appreciation of the state of mind of the blues musician in the poem.