Poetry and Corregidora

Throughout Corregidora, amidst the pages filled largely with dialogue and scene exposition, we occasionally gain glimpses into Ursa’s very poetic thoughts, which also serve as a testament to Gayl Jones’ writing abilities. The inclusion of poetic and prosey lines within the novel fit well within the context of the novel, given that Ursa, the protagonist, is a black woman who sings blues music for a living. Historically, poetry and blues music are inextricably linked; there is even a category of American poetry aptly named blues poetry due to its roots in “the African American oral tradition and the musical tradition of the blues” (Poets.org). Technically speaking, poetry utilizes rhythm as one of its main mechanisms through which a poem becomes sonically pleasing, just as songs contain their own rhythms for the same purpose. Similarly, the intentions of both poetry and blues music are to accurately express an emotion, often through the use of literary devices, the most accessible of which are the simile and the metaphor. As an example, we can look at part of the poem “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes, who is arguably the most recognizable face of the blues poetry movement: Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, / Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon / I heard a Negro play. / Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light / He did a lazy sway. Here, we can see how blues poetry contains its own rhythm, and the line breaks are suggestive of where a singer may pause to breathe or allow words to drag across the rhythm.

In a similar vein, we see how Gayl Jones incorporates a sense of blues poetry through Ursa’s character throughout Corregidora. The poetic lines that resonate with me most deeply from the first chapter are found when Ursa says “Every time I ever want to cry, I sing the blues. Or would there be glasses of tears? Yes, there would be spilled glasses. I came to you, open and wounded. And you said, Sing for me, goddamn it, sing. Your plate was stained with flies, and you kept requesting songs. I sang to you out of my whole body” (46). The first sentence, “Every time I ever want to cry, I sing the blues” completely epitomizes a quote from African-American writer Ralph Ellison, in which he states “that although the blues are often about struggle and depression, they are also full of determination to overcome difficulty “through sheer toughness of spirit”” (Poets.org). In this excerpt from the novel, the notion of “singing” relates to the actual act of singing, yes, but also can be read as a reference to sex. Given Ursa’s familial history, she is often commodified by men and seen merely as a hole for their pleasure, and so it was a painful realization to her that she was not enough for her first husband, Mutt, despite her “[singing] to [him] out of [her] whole body” (46).