Hughes's Ask Your Mama conforms in many respects to [a certain] concept of jazz poetry. Throughout the twelve sections of the volume there are elaborate notes calling for the reciprocal interplay of music and poetry. The dominant theme that in "the Quarter of the Negroes" life is full of waiting and hesitating is stressed musically by "The Hesitation Blues," an old blues number used as a recurring leitmotif throughout Ask Your Mama. Moreover, the ringing indictments of social and moral injustice customarily found in the usual jazz poem are in full evidence in the volume. These are delivered with that peculiar Hughesian blend of anger, irony, and humor. (pp. 110-11)

[In] "the Quarter of the Negroes"—itself a phrase full of anger and irony—tribal togetherness has been replaced by a pervasive hatred of oppressive institutions, mandates, and regulations. This hatred has become the only "umbilical cord" tying...