There are many styles of blues, but the distinction of importance to Hughes is between the genres referred to as 'folk blues' and 'classic blues.' Folk blues and classic blues are distinguished from one another by differences in performers (local talents versus touring professionals), patronage (local community versus mass audience), creation (improvised versus composed), and transmission (oral versus written). In inventing blues poetry, Hughes solved two problems: first, how to write blues lyrics in such a way that they work on the printed page, and second, how to exploit the blues form poetically without losing all sense of authenticity. However, Langston Hughes, the first writer to grapple with these difficulties of blue poetry, in fact succeeded in producing poems that capture the quality of genuine, performed blues while remaining effective as poems. For Oliver, the true spirit of the blues inevitably eludes the self-conscious imitator. 'Blues is for singing,' writes folk musicologist Paul Oliver, and 'is not a form of folk song that stands up particularly well when written down.' A poet who wants to write blues can attempt to avoid this problem by poeticizing the form-but literary blues tend to read like bad poetry rather than like refined folk song.
