Jazz Poetry Research Articles

Spirituality in the Black Arts Movement

The article investigates the significance of spirituality in the works of the Black Arts Movement poets. By examining the poetry of Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou, the study uncovers the various facets of spirituality that African Americans embrace, including “Africanized” Christianity, jazz poetry, and Islam. The article aims to show if spirituality is merely a way to celebrate cultural diversity or a vehicle for social change. It draws on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s theory of minor literature to demonstrate that the Black Arts Movement is a minor literature, whereby cultural markers such as spirituality are politicized. Because spirituality endows the Black Arts Movement with a political value and a collective enunciation, this movement becomes a revolutionary force that aims to enact social change. This politicized spirituality is symptomatic of a desire to foster a strong, positive bond with Africa, which is an antidote to the strangeness of mainstream society. The remembrance of the African past through Afrocentric spirituality is a tool for defining and redefining one’s sense of belonging. It is also a quest for an essentially black aesthetic.

Comics, emceeing and graffiti: A graphic narrative about the relationship between hip-hop culture and comics culture

Hip-hop culture will officially turn 50 years old on 11 August 2023. This cultural movement began in a recreational room in The Bronx, New York City, and is now enjoyed throughout the world. In recognition of its upcoming half-century celebration, this article reviews the origins of hip-hop culture (e.g. hip-hop pioneers such as DJ Kool Herc, Keef Cowboy and Lovebug Starski) and the relationship its emceeing and graffiti elements have with comics culture. I begin with a brief review that demonstrates how graffiti predates hip-hop culture. This is illustrated through depictions of cave paintings, ancient Roman street art and ancient Mayan graffiti. I also highlight hobo graffiti and the graffiti from the Cholos and Bachutos gangs from twentieth-century Los Angeles, California. The introduction of the ‘Kilroy was here’ tag during the Second World War and the protest graffiti from a German anti-Nazi group are also depicted. I conclude the historical review of graffiti with an introduction to the early appearances of hip-hop-styled graffiti. Next, I present multiple historical influences on hip-hop emceeing. Examples include (but are not limited to) West African griots, enslaved Africans, Muhammad Ali, Millie Jackson, The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. Likewise, older genres, such as funk music, blues music, jazz poetry and Black militant poetry inspired much of rap music. Afterwards, I examine the bidirectional relationship between graffiti and comics art, and emceeing and the textual/storytelling aspects of comics. This includes comics-inspired graffiti, hip-hop monikers (e.g. Big Pun, Snoop Dogg, MF Doom and Jean Grae), hip-hop lyrics (from artists such as Grandmaster Caz, Inspectah Deck, Jay-Z and The Last Emperor) and album covers. Conversely, I offer examples of how graffiti has inspired comics visuals and storytelling as well as how emceeing has inspired the comic-book storytelling and the protagonists featured in fictional and non-fictional comic book narratives.

Jazz Poetry - Symbolism and Phonological Rhetoric

The analysis of Langston Hughes’ poetic works in a linguistic context is utmost interesting. In this regard, attention is drawn to the stylistic features of the transmission of symbolism and the phonological rhetoric. Hughes's poems are full of examples of symbolism that reach the reader through metaphorical as artistic techniques.Although Langston Hughes's poetic work is full of examples of symbolisms, in this study we will focus only on the symbol of "river", which is found in many of the poet's works. In addition, the second task of the research is the phonetic analysis of the rhythms of jazz and blues in the poems, which gives amazing phonological tones and sound to the poems and distinguishes this style from other literary styles.

Jazz Poetry as a Message of African American Culture: An Interview with Lenard D. Moore

Jazz Poetry as a Message of African American Culture:An Interview with Lenard D. Moore John Zheng Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Lenard D. Moore is a prolific poet with seven poetry collections. Known internationally as a haiku poet, Moore shows his great interest in various poetic forms and expressions in The Geography of Jazz, reprinted by Blair in September 2020, which brings us his jazz experience and feeling. To Moore, jazz is a celebration of American life and culture. This celebration challenges him to present such great jazz musicians as Max Roach, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, or the unknown ones described in the poem "Raleigh Jazz Festival, 1986." The impact is immediate as The Geography of Jazz renews the jazz performances. This interview, conducted by email in February and October 2021 and revised in March 2022, serves as a complement to a previous interview, conducted in 2017, which focused mainly on Moore's haiku writing and other books. John Zheng: How important is jazz as an essential musical expression of African American experience? Lenard D. Moore: Jazz is one of the great musical genres, which African Americans invented in New Orleans around one hundred twenty-one years ago or around the turn of the last century, the twentieth century. An expressive form, it is so important that it emerges in the way we talk and walk. Zheng: And how important is it to American culture? Moore: Jazz is American culture because it is part of the fabric and part of the quilt of America. It is appreciated and celebrated all over the world. To that end, America is jazz as well as other forms of music. [End Page 99] Jazz has a way of bringing everyone together. When we come together, love happens. Zheng: What has urged you to write jazz poetry? Moore: It is the feel of jazz and the improvisation that have led me to write jazz poetry. I also like what Langston Hughes, Michael S. Harper, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Eugene B. Redmond have done with jazz poetry. In fact, Harper's book, Dear John, Dear Coltrane, has been such an important book to me. I reread Harper's book again and again. He incorporated much history as well as music into his poetry. I like his approach to writing jazz poetry. I, too, employ history in my poetry. I want to capture the mood and innovation of jazz and infuse it into my poetry. In addition, I like to take risks with my poetry writing. I do not want to be pigeonholed with my poetry. I keep doing new things. I write poetry in more than thirty different poetic forms. I think experimentation has a way of bringing about discovery. So, maybe I am able to work toward a sense of discovery in my jazz poetry by pushing the boundaries or extending the boundaries. If possible, I strive to write until the jazz poem sings back at me. Zheng: Poetry is a carrier of music. Is there an emphasis on the title of your poetry collection, The Geography of Jazz? Moore: Yes, there is a definite emphasis on the title of my poetry collection. My original manuscript was cut about thirty pages because I wrote about jazz artists and jazz tunes from all over the world. I really had a focus on the geography of jazz. So, I came up with the title of my manuscript several years ago. I worked on my manuscript for more than twenty years. At some point, however, I hope to publish the other section of my original manuscript. My original manuscript depicts jazz musicians and singers from Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere. I like different schools of jazz, including Bebop. I am interested in what newer artists are doing, such as Esperanza Spalding, Keiko Matsui, and Youn Sun Nah. Of course, I love the standards or classic jazz tunes. Zheng: Who are your favorite jazz musicians who have invigorated your jazz poetry? [End Page 100] Moore: Musicians who have invigorated my jazz poetry are John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Dizzy...

The Examination on African American’s Delayed Dream through the Analysis of Langston Hughes’ Jazz Poetry

The Examination on African American’s Delayed Dream through the Analysis of Langston Hughes’ Jazz Poetry

The Examination on African American’s Delayed Dream through the Analysis of Langston Hughes’ Jazz Poetry

The Examination on African American’s Delayed Dream through the Analysis of Langston Hughes’ Jazz Poetry

After Hours, Through the Night: Jazz Poetry and the Temporality of Emergence

While popular music has long been recognized as central to the Black Power movement and its writers, jazz has also served as a mode of decolonial thinking for Red Power writers. This essay investigates the places where jazz poetry emerged, analyzes the meanings of darkness, and listens for deep connections between African American and Native American artists and their musical cultures. My analysis of selected examples of jazz poetry, from Langston Hughes’s foundational jazz and blues poems to more recent compositions by Yosef Komunyakaa and Joy Harjo, shows how jazz has traveled across racial, cultural, and gender divides to disrupt time, to articulate the symbolic and political potential of night, and to reconnect printed poetry with aural performance. In the process, I argue, jazz poetry reveals critical intersections between race and culture and creates new spaces for active and engaged resistance.

Table of Contents, Masthead, and Editor's Note

Music & Lit Lusterlit’s musical alchemy • Leontyne Price Jazz poetry • rock operas • soca fugues A visit to Prince’s Minneapolis Amelia Curran & more REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Cixin Liu Maxim Amelin Porochista Khakpour & more World LiteratureToday Your passport to great reading RUSSIAN POETRY FROM THE ASHES OF EMPIRE | LILLIAM RIVERA’S Y.A. READS | FAROE ISLANDS FICTIONS NEUSTADT LIT FEST International Books & Culture Oct. 9–11, 2018 featuring Neustadt Prize Winner Edwidge Danticat Check out the festival highlights on page 4 or view the full schedule of events at neustadtfestival.org The University of Oklahoma • Norman “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously.” – Edwidge Danticat Sponsored by World Literature Today, the Neustadt Family, and the University of Oklahoma Announcing the AmericAn LiterAry trAnsLAtors AssociAtion LongLists for the 2018 nAtionAL trAnsLAtion AwArds in Poetry And Prose! Find out more about the titles, judges, and awards at www.LiterArytrAnsLAtors.wordPress.com! And see this year’s winners crowned at ALTA41: Performance, Props, and Platforms in Bloomington, IN, October 31 November 3, 2018! Learn more about the conference and register at www.LiterArytrAnsLAtors.org. Poetry The Book of DisquieT, by Fernando Pessoa translated by Margaret Jull Costa DirecTions for use, by Ana Ristovic translated by Steven Teref and Maja Teref hackers, by Aase Berg translated by Johannes Göransson i rememBer nighTfall, by Marosa di Giorgio translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas if i Were a suiciDe BomBer, by Per Aage Brandt translated by Thom Satterlee magneTic PoinT: selecTeD Poems, by Ryszard Krynicki translated by Clare Cavanagh my lai, by Carmen Berenguer translated by Liz Henry The oDyssey, by Homer translated by Emily Wilson oxygen: selecTeD Poems, by Julia Fiedorczuk translated by Bill Johnston sonic Peace, by Kiriu Minashita translated by Spencer Thurlow and Eric Hyett sPiral sTaircase: collecTeD Poems, by Hirato Renkichi translated by Sho Sugita ThirD-millennium hearT, by Ursula Andkjær Olsen translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen Prose affecTions, by Rodrigo Hasbún translated by Sophie Hughes augusT, by Romina Paula translated by Jennifer Croft comPass, by Mathias Énard translated by Charlotte Mandell DanDelions, by Yasunari Kawabata translated by Michael Emmerich ghachar ghochar, by Vivek Shanbhag translated by Srinath Perur The imPossiBle fairy Tale, by Han Yujoo translated by Janet Hong The invenTeD ParT, by Rodrigo Fresán translated by Will Vanderhyden iTalian chronicles, by Stendhal translated by Raymond N. MacKenzie moving The Palace, by Charif Majdalani translated by Edward Gauvin olD renDering PlanT, by Wolfgang Hilbig translated by Isabel Fargo Cole sWalloWing mercury, by Wioletta Greg translated by Eliza Marciniak The WorlD goes on, by László Krasznahorkai translated by George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet, and John Batki Fiction 14 Summer with Halla by Sólrún Michelsen 20 Black Cadillac by Milena Solot 26 Jóhanna Mørk by Jóanes Nielsen Essay 32 The Puterbaugh Essay In the Den of the Voice by Philip Metres Music & Lit Lusterlit’s musical alchemy • Leontyne Price Jazz poetry • rock operas • soca fugues A visit to Prince’s Minneapolis Amelia Curran & more REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Cixin Liu Max Ritvo Porochista Khakpour & more WorldLiteratureToday Your passport to great reading RUSSIAN POETRY FROM THE ASHES OF EMPIRE | LILLIAM RIVERA’S Y.A. READS | FAROE ISLANDS FICTIONS In Every Issue | 3 Editor’s Note | 5 Notebook | 25 Editor’s Pick | 66 World Literature in Review | 96 Outpost 40 A Conversation with Lusterlit’s Susan Hwang & Charlie Nieland by Michelle Johnson 43 Music & Lit Reading List by Michelle Johnson 44 Four Poems by Samantha Thornhill 47 Trio by Jeanne Farewell 52 Auscultate by Monchoachi 54 The Rehearsal by Eric Ellingsen 60 “An aria is a weather event” by Kevin Simmonds 62 Amelia Curran by Andrew DuBois SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2018 Crime & Mystery 10 Ghosts in the White House by J. Madison Davis Poetry 13 Three Poems by Nazem Elsayed 19 Three Poems by Yi Sha 24 Outgoing Vessel (an excerpt) by Ursula Andkjær Olsen 29 Two Poems by Salgado Maranhão 30 Three Poems by Andrea Cote Botero Three Poems by Yi Sha Music & Lit 19 39 about the cover Illustration by WLT art director Jen Rickard Blair. 26 40 Jóhanna Mørk by Jóanes Nielsen Q&A with Lusterlit by Michelle Johnson Contents cover feature What’s on worldlit.org Visit our website...

Table of Contents, Masthead, and Editor's Note

Music & Lit Lusterlit’s musical alchemy • Leontyne Price Jazz poetry • rock operas • soca fugues A visit to Prince’s Minneapolis Amelia Curran & more REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Cixin Liu Maxim Amelin Porochista Khakpour & more World LiteratureToday Your passport to great reading RUSSIAN POETRY FROM THE ASHES OF EMPIRE | LILLIAM RIVERA’S Y.A. READS | FAROE ISLANDS FICTIONS NEUSTADT LIT FEST International Books & Culture Oct. 9–11, 2018 featuring Neustadt Prize Winner Edwidge Danticat Check out the festival highlights on page 4 or view the full schedule of events at neustadtfestival.org The University of Oklahoma • Norman “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously.” – Edwidge Danticat Sponsored by World Literature Today, the Neustadt Family, and the University of Oklahoma Announcing the AmericAn LiterAry trAnsLAtors AssociAtion LongLists for the 2018 nAtionAL trAnsLAtion AwArds in Poetry And Prose! Find out more about the titles, judges, and awards at www.LiterArytrAnsLAtors.wordPress.com! And see this year’s winners crowned at ALTA41: Performance, Props, and Platforms in Bloomington, IN, October 31 November 3, 2018! Learn more about the conference and register at www.LiterArytrAnsLAtors.org. Poetry The Book of DisquieT, by Fernando Pessoa translated by Margaret Jull Costa DirecTions for use, by Ana Ristovic translated by Steven Teref and Maja Teref hackers, by Aase Berg translated by Johannes Göransson i rememBer nighTfall, by Marosa di Giorgio translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas if i Were a suiciDe BomBer, by Per Aage Brandt translated by Thom Satterlee magneTic PoinT: selecTeD Poems, by Ryszard Krynicki translated by Clare Cavanagh my lai, by Carmen Berenguer translated by Liz Henry The oDyssey, by Homer translated by Emily Wilson oxygen: selecTeD Poems, by Julia Fiedorczuk translated by Bill Johnston sonic Peace, by Kiriu Minashita translated by Spencer Thurlow and Eric Hyett sPiral sTaircase: collecTeD Poems, by Hirato Renkichi translated by Sho Sugita ThirD-millennium hearT, by Ursula Andkjær Olsen translated by Katrine Øgaard Jensen Prose affecTions, by Rodrigo Hasbún translated by Sophie Hughes augusT, by Romina Paula translated by Jennifer Croft comPass, by Mathias Énard translated by Charlotte Mandell DanDelions, by Yasunari Kawabata translated by Michael Emmerich ghachar ghochar, by Vivek Shanbhag translated by Srinath Perur The imPossiBle fairy Tale, by Han Yujoo translated by Janet Hong The invenTeD ParT, by Rodrigo Fresán translated by Will Vanderhyden iTalian chronicles, by Stendhal translated by Raymond N. MacKenzie moving The Palace, by Charif Majdalani translated by Edward Gauvin olD renDering PlanT, by Wolfgang Hilbig translated by Isabel Fargo Cole sWalloWing mercury, by Wioletta Greg translated by Eliza Marciniak The WorlD goes on, by László Krasznahorkai translated by George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet, and John Batki Fiction 14 Summer with Halla by Sólrún Michelsen 20 Black Cadillac by Milena Solot 26 Jóhanna Mørk by Jóanes Nielsen Essay 32 The Puterbaugh Essay In the Den of the Voice by Philip Metres Music & Lit Lusterlit’s musical alchemy • Leontyne Price Jazz poetry • rock operas • soca fugues A visit to Prince’s Minneapolis Amelia Curran & more REVIEWS OF BOOKS BY Cixin Liu Max Ritvo Porochista Khakpour & more WorldLiteratureToday Your passport to great reading RUSSIAN POETRY FROM THE ASHES OF EMPIRE | LILLIAM RIVERA’S Y.A. READS | FAROE ISLANDS FICTIONS In Every Issue | 3 Editor’s Note | 5 Notebook | 25 Editor’s Pick | 66 World Literature in Review | 96 Outpost 40 A Conversation with Lusterlit’s Susan Hwang & Charlie Nieland by Michelle Johnson 43 Music & Lit Reading List by Michelle Johnson 44 Four Poems by Samantha Thornhill 47 Trio by Jeanne Farewell 52 Auscultate by Monchoachi 54 The Rehearsal by Eric Ellingsen 60 “An aria is a weather event” by Kevin Simmonds 62 Amelia Curran by Andrew DuBois SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2018 Crime & Mystery 10 Ghosts in the White House by J. Madison Davis Poetry 13 Three Poems by Nazem Elsayed 19 Three Poems by Yi Sha 24 Outgoing Vessel (an excerpt) by Ursula Andkjær Olsen 29 Two Poems by Salgado Maranhão 30 Three Poems by Andrea Cote Botero Three Poems by Yi Sha Music & Lit 19 39 about the cover Illustration by WLT art director Jen Rickard Blair. 26 40 Jóhanna Mørk by Jóanes Nielsen Q&A with Lusterlit by Michelle Johnson Contents cover feature What’s on worldlit.org Visit our website...

Birth of the Cool: African American Culture and the Beat Identity

The nativity of Jazz poetry was in ‘jive’ or the language of the coloured enslaved Americans, who were forced to learn a foreign language; however these ‘Black’ Americans, found a new form of expression and handled the English language in their own style, Jive was the end result of such an experiment. Even before the Civil war and years after it, these coloured people used jive, to express their pent up feelings amongst themselves, their language became more explosive and provocative and this is what came to be known as the ‘jive’ or ‘hip’ language. My paper focuses on the influence of Jive and Jazz lingo on the Beat Poets movement.

Jazz Griots: Music as History in the 1960s African American Poem, by Jean-Philippe Marcoux

<i>Jazz Griots: Music as History in the 1960s African American Poem</i>, by Jean-Philippe Marcoux

Of the Morrow's Sweet Expanse (Diptych)

46 WLT NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 cover feature art poetry Panel I Assignment Zero: mis(s)- conception She is already here Or is it “I”? Antecedent that simply replied to her telluric calling first? Chimer of a “tick-tock vacancy” Body, any body in heat (of telling) Waiting Fating to be conscripted to serve ages of human time in one run of hope Or is it Mother? split-off- tongue cry(o)genic Gape of langue she still has no love in but incantation: Oocyte cele ovum cite Game-to-cite Blastocyte cele laukia tikisi ji laukia Ootid tikisi iki She is blast tiki laukia Blast wish laukia 12 ji tikisi iki Waiting tikisi iki to laukia Lull of null laike Gametocyte laukia A site of sight blasto counting site laukia ji tikisi ji Meiotic dance One zero(whirl) of show Meantime Fiona’s Wunderkammer clocks strike Habitat Reverter’s somber U-turn bells As in some ancient snake world of the wrong way time Ouroboros connecting night to night’s own tail of madness, badness and the World’s all sadness Or is this Noose twist of the future in yet another habitat bent wrong to do time for the gloom apportioners we never bargained for? Time wizens BTW at god’s “Sky(go)vernor” emporium and on the shelves there among mickle other “things un-living” are goods endangered some say babies Lithuanian are ticking low on stock Of the Morrow’s Sweet Expanse (Diptych) by Rita Malikonyte Mockus WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 47 Panel II Liniment: update(a)bility for “first-person singular” app [But wait] the world is way more hip than I my passé life and its uneasy slip Together, world and I we need to rest from me, say, carve a citadel out from the unfinished fear of see to soothe the fruit held crosswise barb(juiced) fibers of a private dark your darkling. Wake up, it’s time to begin / The forgetting Textual notes: Excerpted from a tetraptych (four-panel poem). Repetition of the phrase ji tikisi tiki laukia (Panel I) is in Lithuanian. It means“hoping, re-hoping, in-hoping, and waiting inside time.”The word iki means“until”and cele means “a cell.”Last sentence in Panel II is a quote from Ben Lerner. above Kampas, Nukryziuota Obelis (Crucified apple tree), 1993. Private collection. opposite Fiona Hall, Wrong Way Time, 2012–15 (detail), © the artist. Courtesy of the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Image credit: Clayton Glen. Rita Malikonyte Mockus, born in Lithuania, is a poet, performer, and translator. Her poetry was published in Salos (Sviesa Press, Lithuania). Mockus wrote a cycle of poems for the Electroshock Label, Russia, and her work“Yoin”was performed at the National Philharmonic of Lithuania. Mockus also read her poetry at the City of Asylum’s (Pittsburgh) Jazz Poetry Concert. Australian artist Fiona Hall’s installation Wrong Way Time— currently on view at the 56th Venice Biennale—responds to the perilous state of the environment and to our own “madness, badness, and sadness stretching beyond the foreseeable future.” Rimvidas Jankauskas“Kampas” (1957–1993) was a prominent Lithuanian abstract expressionist painter and one of the most temperamental, unrestrained, and rebellious personalities in the Lithuanian art scene of the 1990s. ...

Of the Morrow's Sweet Expanse (Diptych)

46 WLT NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 cover feature art poetry Panel I Assignment Zero: mis(s)- conception She is already here Or is it “I”? Antecedent that simply replied to her telluric calling first? Chimer of a “tick-tock vacancy” Body, any body in heat (of telling) Waiting Fating to be conscripted to serve ages of human time in one run of hope Or is it Mother? split-off- tongue cry(o)genic Gape of langue she still has no love in but incantation: Oocyte cele ovum cite Game-to-cite Blastocyte cele laukia tikisi ji laukia Ootid tikisi iki She is blast tiki laukia Blast wish laukia 12 ji tikisi iki Waiting tikisi iki to laukia Lull of null laike Gametocyte laukia A site of sight blasto counting site laukia ji tikisi ji Meiotic dance One zero(whirl) of show Meantime Fiona’s Wunderkammer clocks strike Habitat Reverter’s somber U-turn bells As in some ancient snake world of the wrong way time Ouroboros connecting night to night’s own tail of madness, badness and the World’s all sadness Or is this Noose twist of the future in yet another habitat bent wrong to do time for the gloom apportioners we never bargained for? Time wizens BTW at god’s “Sky(go)vernor” emporium and on the shelves there among mickle other “things un-living” are goods endangered some say babies Lithuanian are ticking low on stock Of the Morrow’s Sweet Expanse (Diptych) by Rita Malikonyte Mockus WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 47 Panel II Liniment: update(a)bility for “first-person singular” app [But wait] the world is way more hip than I my passé life and its uneasy slip Together, world and I we need to rest from me, say, carve a citadel out from the unfinished fear of see to soothe the fruit held crosswise barb(juiced) fibers of a private dark your darkling. Wake up, it’s time to begin / The forgetting Textual notes: Excerpted from a tetraptych (four-panel poem). Repetition of the phrase ji tikisi tiki laukia (Panel I) is in Lithuanian. It means“hoping, re-hoping, in-hoping, and waiting inside time.”The word iki means“until”and cele means “a cell.”Last sentence in Panel II is a quote from Ben Lerner. above Kampas, Nukryziuota Obelis (Crucified apple tree), 1993. Private collection. opposite Fiona Hall, Wrong Way Time, 2012–15 (detail), © the artist. Courtesy of the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Image credit: Clayton Glen. Rita Malikonyte Mockus, born in Lithuania, is a poet, performer, and translator. Her poetry was published in Salos (Sviesa Press, Lithuania). Mockus wrote a cycle of poems for the Electroshock Label, Russia, and her work“Yoin”was performed at the National Philharmonic of Lithuania. Mockus also read her poetry at the City of Asylum’s (Pittsburgh) Jazz Poetry Concert. Australian artist Fiona Hall’s installation Wrong Way Time— currently on view at the 56th Venice Biennale—responds to the perilous state of the environment and to our own “madness, badness, and sadness stretching beyond the foreseeable future.” Rimvidas Jankauskas“Kampas” (1957–1993) was a prominent Lithuanian abstract expressionist painter and one of the most temperamental, unrestrained, and rebellious personalities in the Lithuanian art scene of the 1990s. ...

In Both Hands, Courage

In Both Hands, Courage(A portrait of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone) Lauren Camp (bio) I went down and loved the dead. I cried for the dead: a crowing, a cawing,the extended caress of shrill impossible loss. In my hands, —dirt. I owned each tiny shovelful. My kingdom, my nest of dirt. I dug a new uncluttered space. This was a lonely burial. I was not afraid of the night, not afraid of containing his body. What is in me was for him. Dirt was the square root of tomorrow, which I knew I’d never see. My voice tore at the stars.Stars whispered back a compacted prayer as I dug. I opened the house of the dead with my soft hands because it was my power.I lay at the center of the house with the substance of my dead brother beneath me. I touched the night, each scoop of it, and wept in counterpoint to the dawn,a commotion that scissored through each shadow. If anyone watched me, I did not notice, but I heard mongrel dogs by the fence, their mouths spilling black judgment. My eyes adjusted to each new sketch of the restless heavens. Why is the blood of the sky so beautiful? The small, imperfect grave filled my hours, the minutes. I knew I would be punished for the dirt [End Page 113] under my nails, for my screechesand the crown of grief, but I dug, and dug again. I clawed at the earth, the frost-edged crust.What satisfaction to harrow and cover. —I felt sated. I cried out the ruined breath of my father, and the scattered body of my brother. I surrendered to the ground twiceand returned again. I surrendered again, wanting nothing but to stay on the shore of my grief, claiming the price of this unholy noise. I disfigured myself with surrender. Day was carnivorous, approaching. My life will be summarized quickly. It has been exactly enough. [End Page 114] Lauren Camp Lauren Camp is the author of two books of poems, The Dailiness (Edwin E. Smith, 2013) and This Business of Wisdom (West End Press, 2010). She was a juror for the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and guest editor for special sections in World Literature Today (on international jazz poetry) and Malpaís Review (on the poetry of Iraq). Her poems have been published in Brilliant Corners, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sweet, and Feminist Studies. A radio producer and host on Santa Fe Public Radio, Lauren is also an acclaimed visual artist (www.laurencamp.com). [lauren@laurencamp.com] Copyright © 2014 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.

Two Poems

16 World Literature Today Letter to Baghdad Even if my father never speaks a word of it, I will know he brought a candle, a cough, and the occupied side of his heart. I will know the trees held him, that they rose above rooflines, and where they met, he climbed and saw roads paved only with praises. The sun he carried across oceans turned copper at his window. I saw it too, on the gray edge of my childhood, and I was marked when each day awoke. He devoured the silence, the parts that could not be cured, and when he was hungry for it, I swallowed the silence, his self-portrait of confession. When I found an old shawl and silver teapot in the oven, and he pretended he didn’t know what they meant, I remembered bitter lemons had moistened his mouth. What he inhaled from his copious memory left his tongue empty then full, and somehow I know his tongue will always be brushed with the leaving. Two Poems Lauren Camp photo : perry casta ñeda library map collection january–february 2013 • 17 One day we were talking about beginnings, and I had begun. I wasn’t at the center anymore, and we kept letting in a little air, and he showed me a word for the boy he once was and he showed me this Arabic word and in this way I knew this was the most authentic mourning I would ever see. And I saw it and he said it again, and we were covered with it. Entirely covered. This was his home, he said, as he gave me the address, the place where the first time and the spurned and the color and the milkmaid stood in the alley. And even though he didn’t tell me about yesterday and the day and the day and I never saw any other way to tell it I never saw heaven or the land that was black, one day I knew enough to take the word from him and drink my fill of everything every little thing every steeped thing and there were many trees and not enough cold and we sat by the river that curves in every direction and our hearts lifted up to the birds. Why Dad Doesn’t Pay Attention to Iraq Anymore You can all stop asking about the Abu Ghraib torture and how he felt when the pictures were published of men in long hoods. He was traveling the white rim of traffic from New York to the city of brotherly love, stopping for donuts (cream-filled). When Hussein’s statue fell, he was up in his condo, organizing pencils, most with erasers. His radio tuned to Beethoven’s Sixth or some college football. Collateral damage, snipers, missiles, vessels, and hostile attention: he’s not watching. His black shadows are inverted. His horizon’s a gold minaret. The zip and clatter of dust. A river branched under a bridge, then cut from the muscle of land. He sees the circumference of dates. Unsaid words pile in dunes. All he wanted was some portion of yes and stay, those phrases no one could pack. The tick talks backward. His single truth was to stop reading; letters became drifts. In terrible gutters and columns of newsprint, the longest griefs are those we never look at. Anyway, even in war stories, everyone dies in the end. Lauren Camp is the author of This Business of Wisdom (2010) and editor of the poetry blog Which Silk Shirt. Each Sunday, she hosts Audio Saucepan, a global music/poetry program on Santa Fe Public Radio. She guest edited WLT’s special section on international jazz poetry in the March 2011 issue. “Letter to Baghdad” begins her manuscript-in-progress, One Hundred Hungers. In 2012 she received the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award for another poem from this project. Editorial note: Visit WLT’s website for two more of Camp’s new Baghdad poems and her blog post detailing her effort to get firsthand information from her father for these poems. photo : david camp ...

Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry / Anthems, Sonnets, and Chants: Recovering the African American Poetry of the 1930s / The Muse Is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word

Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry / Anthems, Sonnets, and Chants: Recovering the African American Poetry of the 1930s / The Muse Is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word

The muse is music: jazz poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to spoken word

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 R iff, Remembrance, and Revision 1. Listening to What the Ear Demands: Langston Hughes on the (Jazz) Record 33 2. Jazz Prosody: The Gendered Contours of the Post-Soul Coltrane Poem 85 New Traditions, New Translations 3. Opening the Canary's Cage: Sex, Gender, and the Jazz Body 129 4. A Cave Canem Continuum or a Dark Room Renaissance? From Jazz Improvisation to Hip-Hop Stylization in Contemporary Black Poetry 167 Epilogue. When the Muse Is Music: Collaboration and Improvisation in Jazz Poetics 209 Notes 231 Works Cited 249 Index 273

Movies, Modernity, and All that Jazz: Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred

Over the past decade, in a proliferation of scholarship paralleling more general critical investigation into the connections between literature and jazz, scholars have taken up the question of jazz and blues influence in the poems of Langston Hughes. (1) Much of this scholarship has centered on Hughes's accomplished poem sequence, his 1951 Montage of a Dream Deferred, in which poems based on everything from boogie-woogie to bebop are juxtaposed to depict the dreams and difficulties of a Harlem in transition. Considering these approaches to Hughes's poetic appropriation of African American musical forms, in conjunction with a surging critical interest in the intersection of modern poetry and mass culture, it somewhat surprising that so little attention has been given to the various mechanisms--the phonograph, the radio, and above all, the sound film--through which this music was often heard and which are so prominently depicted in Hughes's work. This inattention to Hughes's fascination with the instruments of mass culture goes hand-in-hand with a general critical neglect of Hughes's radical politics. When treated at all, Hughes's radical commitments have often been reduced to the proletarian poetry of the 1930s that has generally been taken as a kind of hiccup--an abrupt disruption and departure from issues of race and community that concerned him in the 1920s and that he would return to in the 1940s and for the rest of his career. Ryan Jerving, for example, places Hughes's jazz poetry directly against such commitments, arguing that Hughes's handling of jazz--and his virtual abandonment of it for almost two decades--bears the telltale marks of an entertainment industry form that could not be articulated confidently or without a certain ambivalence to black identity or to anticapitalist critique until after the Second World War (661). (2) I want to suggest, however, that while Hughes does in his late poems return to jazz and blues, his handling of them still very much caught up in the ambivalence and anticapitalist critique that had marked his radical poetry of the 1930s. His insistence on the authenticity of jazz as an African American art form as well as a form of social critique, evident in his depiction of bebop in Montage, asserted against the standardization of jazz by a (white) U. S. culture industry, whose most powerful agent, Walter Benjamin reminds us, is the (221). Under this culture industry, as Krin Gabbard has argued, the movies became a powerful site for producing a mythology of jazz--that other history of a commercial music that so often neglected by scholars in favor of a few unusually talented composers and performers (1-2). I will show how Hughes incorporates both jazz and film form into his poems, placing them in dialectical contention, to emphasize both the music and one of its pervasive mediums. This dialectic played out in a number of discursive registers--oral/visual, black/white, embodiment/disembodiment, sex/impotence, and primitivism/progress--that Hughes foregrounds in an attempt to offer a specifically black subjectivity that becomes a point of negotiation of mass modernity as well as a productive alternative to it. (3) Formally, the poem itself becomes a forum for staging this dialectic and ultimately Hughes's poetry serves to help articulate a point of political resistance beyond the realm of the poem. Movies and Mass Modernity From the early days of silent cinema, African Americans have had a complex relationship with film. They were, not surprisingly, generally caricatured and ridiculed on the silver screen, often by white actors in blackface. As a coherent audience to which films were actually aimed, African Americans were generally ignored, and as several scholars have pointed out, the very standardization of a Classical Hollywood style--with its emphasis on the invisible continuity of image and sound--was dependent on a stable notion of whiteness. …

What's in the Notes: The Sound of Jazz in Poetry

What'sinthe Notes: The Sound ofJazz in Poetry LaurenCamp a writer everhopeto successfully render an auralform in words?Can thatwriter makeitpossibleforus to appreciate whatwe might otherwise hear?To complicate thechanceofadequately capturing sound,try askingthatwriter toexpress jazzoneofthemostsophisticated musicalforms, a construction thatdemandsa certain openness andperhaps evenexperience with themusic. Somewriters are able to turnjazz inside out, making uswanttolisten more closely. Each writer seesdifferent seams,different waysthe musicis stitched together. Eachis courageous because,after all,jazz is crazy-impossible to style eventhefirst time, and thesewriters are re-styling itfor us. Inmyyears broadcasting jazz ontheradio, themostcommoncomment Tve heardis a simpleone: "I justdon'tunderstand it."Jazz is a remarkable beast - a many-headed animal, onemany peopleseemafraid togetnear.How canwe define jazz? Is itMilesDavis's Bitches Brew and thefusion soundsofthe1970s?Is it theethereal andabstract structures that today's musicians keepbuilding? Is itsomething else? Wemayneedreassurance that wecangetclose, that wecanletthecreature climb intoourlap. Certainly, ifyoucometojazzwith a knowledgeofmusicand howitis created - inother words, ifyouarea musician - youknowabout secondsandfifths andscales.You knowabout melodyand timesignatures. You are already educated abouthowtodecipher phrasing and multitextural sounds. Ifyoucometojazz as a historian, themusic repeats whatyoualreadyknow.Jazz,in particular , is a vitalchronicle ofwherewe are,or where wejustwere.Inmorethanonesense,it isa "record" ofthetimes. Musicians figure out a waytocorral politics andtheir ownpersonal wounds.Then,through theirinstrument and ensemble, through their compositions andconcerts , they givevoiceandexpression towhatis happening. Poetsdo thesame,shifting words, meaning, andmetaphor tobuilda rhythm and harmony, tobuilda statement. Butwhathappenswhena writer takesthe audibleinputaway,whenwords - and more specifically, poems - becometheonlysounds we hear?This could confound a reader - or maybe, ifwe'relucky, clarify. Just as withpoetry, youcancometojazz withnothing, no understanding. Perhapsthis is the best way to appreciateany formof expression. As a visual artist(amongother all-consuming disciplines), I am mostmoved by theresponseof people who reactviscerallytomywork , thendisavowtheir comments becausethey haveno formal arteducation. To knownothing might justbe thetruest wayto experience anycomplex artform. You respond withyourbodyand yourfeelings - and leave ¡ theanalytical, thinking mindtotheside.Allit reallytakesis theability to openyoursenses andreceive. I O 1 might wonderwhyjazz is so inspira- I tionaltopoets.Poetry andjazz havelong I slepttogether; theBeatsmerged thetwointoan I uncensored, often stream-of-consciousness style I thatseemedtofallas easilyfrom their pensas I Dizzy'sand Bird'snotesfellfrom their horns. I Soundsspewedandstreamed; they rushed out I inalldirections. I Butthatis nottheonlyform jazz poetry I takes,norshouldit be. The canonofjazz is I enormous; it allowsformanydifferent styles I ofexpression. Thegiddynotesof"traditional I jazz" datebackmorethanonehundred years. I Thosesoundseventually ledinto thebusymaze I ofbebop.Nomatter howthat music twisted and I turned, itstill provided a wonderful network of I JAZZ POETRY JAZZ POETRY possibilityforsound. The music was easy to get lost in, and if you didn't emerge again fora while,that was okay too. It took you somewhere, as all good artdoes. The music flowed from and through thatcomplex wall of sound, and from the postwar dissent of those times.Itis astounding to hear how much a musician could manage to say beforethe vinylranout. The music didn't stay there, though. Jazz kept swinging forward,shifting and reflecting the everevolving structureof our society. Today's substance, to hope to gather it in your handsand makesense ofitinyourwords. O of the truly brightspots in jazz is each proclamationofsomethingthat came before - thehint of a previous tune, quoted, then turned on itshead. Whenyou hear a familiarsound reconstructed from an earliergeneration, it is like being given the currency to buy your way into a new tune. And isn't this, in a way, what our authors are doing spinning jazz so we jazz is a sound thatis impossibletodescribein one way. It is urban noise pressed against the edge of hip-hop,and it is sound that travels down wide avenues of patience. It is sound thatbranchesout and up untilyou are notsure which treeyou've climbed or why,but meanwhile ,as longas you're up there,you mightas well admiretheview. Itis sound thatallows us to forgetthegriefand ceremonyof the world aroundus,orsound thatpushes us directly into whatmightseem likedarknessand disorder.It is frivolous and itis necessary. Ifyou happen tobe moved by themusic and youalso happen tobe a writer - itis natural to attemptto definethismalleable,miraculous mightalmostunderstand,if not the whole of it,at least one perspective?The poet has lived with the contentsof thattune,thatmusician, thatmusic.It is in him - and fromit,and from what he findsnearbyin his world,he presents itto us. So themusiccontinuesin thesewords, accompanied by the...

Blueprints and Paradigms

iRnnRffl Blueprints and Paradigms Theparadigms ofWLT havedrastically changed during thepast fewyears! Ittookmetime toadjust, butnowI think I amover allthesurprises (multicultural U.S.poetry, science fiction, sports andliterature, nowscience andliterature). Wow!Youreditorial discussions musthave beenfascinating. Whata treatWLTs archives willbe for thehistorian someday.Ofcourse, beingas ancient as I am,I still remember theoldWLTofthe1970s, with strict boundaries between "foreign" and "domestic" literature, between"belleslettres" and "low-lit." I wonder, was thata consensus, ordidoneindividual drawa blueprint andsubmit it totheeditorial committee? Themagazine is totally postmod although itmaybepost-postmod. Inanycase,I loveit. Alice-Catherine Carls Jackson, Tennessee Editor's note: Overthepastdecade,oureditorial formula has evolvedinresponse tofeedback from ourcontributors worldwide ,recent subscribers and longtime readers, and ourcontributing editorsand student interns hereat theUniversity ofOklahoma.The catalyst forthatevolution camefrom our executive director, Robert ConDavis-Undiano, whochallenged theeditors toopenup thepagesofWLTtoliterate readers who maynotnecessarily be literary specialists. A keymoment in that evolution cameinSeptember 2005, whenwe published an issuewithBobDylanonthecover, whichno doubtcameas a surprise tomany.In a prefatory notetothatissue,Dr.DavisUndiano wrote: "WLTrecognizes that itstraditional coverage of established authors isnotthewholestory andthat theworldis growing older andyounger every day.Thatis,therecognition of emergent literature andculture isessential tounderstanding the world that cross-indexes itself through literature, astheworld of art, politics, andsociallife constantly weavesthefabric ofwhat weknow." Sincethat issue, we'veswitched toa bimonthly publication scheduleand movedtoa moremagazine-like format, and thecurrent issue - withitstwinspecialsections on jazz poetry and ChinesepoetDuo Duo- exemplifies ourongoing commitment toserveas an engaging, informative indextothe worldoftwenty-first-century culture, inallitsforms. Morethan anything else,WLTwantstoopenup theconversation, listen andberesponsive toitsreaders' interests, andcontinue tokeep itsfinger onthepulseofourtimes. from P^J V^y• orsi 4 novel Gahfelibri h, ^^^^^^^Hflf^Kii^ ul^ Wilderness of Mirrors. ^^HjH^^^^^P^ Atthecenter ofboth works is ^^^^n^^^^K TheoKhrisinann. a manwho ^^^^H^^^^Hk cannot seem tochange his life ^^^^K^^^^^Hijk noniatter how many times he V^^Pff^^^^^^^B| resolves todoso.Oneday upon ^^HBd; returning from a trip abroad, Cloth $14.95 Theoarrives hometoread hisownobituary inthepaper. Heshowsupintimefor hisownfuneral andobserves the attending mourners, andyetheisnotabletorevealhimself tothem, andespecially nottohiswife. ...