Jazz Poetry Research Articles

Latin Jazz on the Go in Havana

JAZZ POETRY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H BBBMMMBBBHBHBBBHHMHHi^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^™ after Briiegel's "TheTower ofBabel" Don'tholdyour breath neartheruined river, where water runsfetid, liver-like chunks ofwasterunoff from this city of cranes, levers, ropesandpulleys. Thecommoners gather daily tomeasure thenewfound cracks onthewalls,read them as though they aresomeancient language ofrubble, scrolls tossed outthewindows, these parentheses cuppedinthedistance, beehive structures where smoked sausageshangouttodry, half-dead birds perch onsills, preen weakly as though pecking for parasite morsels. Yourdailybusiness istopatch, scrape, paintthewalls with lime. You,theleveler, thelonely one,bevelinhand, toousedtolife with animals keptindoors here, andtheputrid smells oftheir droppings confuse evenbreadmakers, whomeasure yeast bythecupful. Destruction's nameis everywhere, hungover, relentless initspersistence. Scaffolding embraces thecircular city, itsruin, a hug. During anautumn festival, musicfills thehallways, youdance half-naked with peopleinthepenumbra ofalleyways, porticos, under a coolrespite ofparasols andawnings. Sunlight bleaches thelandscape orange. Cloudscrown theupper crust ofthis rotting, festering city-tower. Ifyoucough orsneeze, itcrumbles backtodust, ash,eternity. Virgil Suárez was borninHavana, Cuba,in1962.Since1972he has livedintheUnited Statesas a naturalized citizen. He istheauthor ofseveralworks offiction, has editedseveralanthologies, and istheauthor ofeightcollections ofpoetry, mostrecently 90Miles: Selected andNew,publishedbythe University ofPittsburgh Press.He iscurrently atwork ona new collection ofpoemstitled Indigo. He livesandworks inFlorida, making KeyBiscayne hishome.When notwriting, he isoutriding his motorcycle upand downtheBlue Highways oftheUnited States. ^^^■PH^^^^^^^H Q: Howwereyoufirst introducedtojazz? ^^^fty^^^^^^^^H A:Iwas introduced tojazz atan early age as a teenagerinLosAngeles, and inparticular Latin jazz with thework ofTito ^^^Hj^^^^^^^H Puente, themaestro. Ihavebeenlistening tobothforms sincethen.Iwascomingofage ina hugecity wherethenight- ^^^^^^^^^^^^H life ruledTherewas nothing better thanto ridearoundinthenight and listen togreatmusic. Later, as a student ingrad ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^| school,Idrovethrough thenight toandfrom school,alwaysblasting themusic. ^I^^^BH^^^^^H Latin Jazzisembodiedinthework ofTitoPuente, DizzyGillespie, and,ifyoustretch it, allthewayintothePania ^B^^Hy^^^^^H All-Stars with Willie Colónand hisgangofmerry Latinopranksters. TheCaribbean, and inparticular Cuba,hasproduced ■JBHII^^^^^^H many greatLatin jazz musicians, for instance PaquitoD'Rivera. ' '-■ Theform hasdeeplyinfluenced meas a poetandwriter, notonlybecause Iloveitas a listener, butbecause itis TITO PUENTE constantly playing inthebackground whileIwrite, so itfilters intothework directly. Astheysay,it'sinthekeyboard, it's intheair, it'sintheblood. 26iWorldLiterature Today o Q_ O co < O to x Q- ...

Thelonious Monk on a Subway

JAZZ POETRY Thelonious Monk on a Subway I metMonk ona subway, coming through thetunnel. Hiswordsfell outbetween thick beardhairs, then lumbered toward me,pausedandsighed. Whenthetrain jerked, hislong fingers reached out, touched mypaleshoulder: heworea rust brown coat. Intervals rode thetrack with us:E-flat, D, C andD. Harmonious fifths, andmismatched chords. He explained that themelodies weredots hishandswanted toconnect. I didn'tunderstand soheinvited metohishome. Weemerged from underground and walked. Step, step, stop overthin tones ofSanJuan Hill.Thesunmovedcloser. Step, pause, step.He smiled that slowspreading smile, shookhandswith a man heknew, mumbled andmovedon. Step, step. OnWestSixty-Third, hefound hisdoor, removed hishat, andknocked. Nellietookhishat. Monk'sfingers lipped thewhite keys, unlocked blackones. He tapped, crossed andbangedagain, rolled hisring intoplace. Evolving patterns unclenched ina danceofabrupt imagination, infinite extrusion. 301WorldLiterature Today cc z O CO UJ cc < a. leftLauren Camp, LoudestNoise,2002, threadworkon layered and rustedcotton, rayonand silk,39" x 59" (adapted from a photo by Don Hunstein). Editorial note:For information about Camp's upcoming art exhibitioninPittsburgh, see page 80. Musicdidn't pourout, didn't puddle. He wrung it from hispalms, revived it,gathered itinagainand playedfor hours - "RoundMidnight" and"BlueMonk," theangles oflines merging until myheadwasfull ofsquares andcurves, thetruth ofspheres. He drewsilence onthat piano inhiskitchen until thesuncameup. I drank another cupoftea andleft through thesmalldoor tothecity, thegraygreen emerging light thesameas anyother day,but thecorners ofhismelodies kept opening andclosing, making infinite space inthechunky dankness oftheswilled avenue. Selectionsfrom Camp's Playlist Thelonious Monk playingany of hisown compositions (solo or ina group) EricDolphy's "Something Sweet, Something Tender" Anyof Duke Ellington'ssuites a Ella Fitzgerald,PureElla (1994) a VijayIyer& RudreshMahanthappa, Raw Materials(2006) March- April2011 i 31 ...

EDITOR'S NOTE

EDITOR'S NOTE theage oftwenty, I becamean accidental jazz aficionado at thesametime I becamean accidental Englishmajor. Twoyears earlier, whenI entered theUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln as a freshman, I wasconvinced thatI neededto pursuea "useful"major,like aeronautical engineering or pre-medicine. Then thesiren songofliterature, inspired bymyreading of Shakespeare in one of Professor Robert Knoll'slegendary survey courses, luredmeaway from career-minded majors andintoan enduring fascination with languages, literature, andculture. Atthesametime, serendipity struck mymusical tastes - I stumbled uponfour jazz albumsincassette recordings, allfirst recorded in 1958-59 and rereleased onColumbia's JazzMasterpieces label: MilesDavis'sKind ofBlue, Billie Holiday'sLady in Satin, Charles Mingus's Mingus AhUrn, andDave Brubeck's TimeOut.I listened to thesealbums obsessively, entranced by Davis's sonicmoods, Holiday'sachingvocals (she died,destitute, in 1959), Mingus's throbbing pulsions, andBrubeck's shifting time signatures. Admittedly, mynewfound passionforjazz was moreemotional and kinesthetic thanculturallysophisticated or historically informed. Little didI know, for example, that thetrack "Fablesof Faubus"onMingus AhUrn wasoriginally a politicallycharged satire ofArkansas governor Orval E. Faubus'sattempts to blockthedesegregation ofCentral HighSchoolin Little Rock,Arkansas, in1957. According toRobert Bennett, thelyrics of the song's original version used"the wholearsenal ofblack-modernist cultural weaponry to expose andridicule American racism." Onthefirst album version released byColumbia, however, thelyrics werestripped out, leaving aninstrumental version that, inBennett's words, "still swings andbopsbut delivers fewpunches." Drawingon Saul Scott's accountofthishistory inFreedom Is,Freedom Ain't: Jazzand theMakingof theSixties(2003), Bennett contends thatmodern jazz, especially thebebop and hardbop ofthelate1950sand '60s,served as a "blueprint forthecultural revolutions ofthe post-World War II Americanavant-garde" as wellas a "revolutionary aesthetic-political soundscape " - namely, a soundtrack totheCivilRights Movement's sit-ins, freedom marches, and other actsofcivildisobedience ("SongsofFreedom: The Politics andGeopolitics ofModern Jazz"). Evenas modern jazz intheUnited States was intertwined withthecultural politics oftheage, theinternational influence ofjazz continued to soar.Asiswellknown, musicians andwriters who flourished in theHarlemRenaissance butwere deniedequalrights during theJim Croweraexperienced tremendous popularity as expatriates performing insuchcities asParis, Havana,andShanghai in the1920sand '30s.Then,in thedecades following World WarII,theU.S.State Department began sendingjazz musicians - including Louis Armstrong, MilesDavis,and CharlesMingus as soft-power cultural ambassadors aroundthe worldas partoftheir overall strategy ofColdWar diplomacy (onthistopic, seePenny VonEschen's fascinating 2004study,Satchmo BlowsUptheWorld: JazzAmbassadors PlaytheColdWar).Littlewonder, then,thatthejazz aesthetic - withits cathartic emphasis onspontaneity, freedom, andimprovisation - found itswayintothework ofa remarkable rangeof international writers, includingBoris Vian,Joseph Skvorecky, JulioCortázar, Haruki Murakami, KamauBrathwaite, MichaelOndaatje, andothers. In thetwenty-first century, theinfusion of jazz intotheworkof contemporary poetsand novelists continues unabated. Thecontributors to thecurrent issue'sspecialsection on jazz poetry all demonstrate botha deep appreciation forthe uniquely American evolution ofthegenre as well as a thorough absorption ofitstropes, themes, and rhythms. As guesteditor LaurenCampnotesin hercompelling introductory essayon thesound ofjazz inpoetry {page 23),oneneednotbe a jazz musician, historian, or connoisseur to appreciate thepoemsincluded here."Toknownothing," she writes, "might justbethetruest waytoexperience anycomplex form ofart.You respond withyour bodyandyourfeelings - andleavetheanalytical, thinking mindtotheside."Evenas we appreciate thegenre's deepembeddedness incomplexities of race,class,and history, in itspurest form jazz is oneofthoseembodied pleasures that justhas to be experienced. Five Songs Played Obsessively on My Cassette Player • Nina Simone,"Chilly Winds Don't Blow/The AmazingNinaSimone • Charles Mingus, "Goodbye PorkPie Hat," MingusAhUrn • Miles Davis,"Flamenco Sketches," KindofBlue • EllaFitzgerald, "Day Dream,"EllaSingsDuke • Dave Brubeck, "Blue Rondo à laTurk," TimeOut WÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊM March-April2011 13 z O < m < i Q. ...

Harryette Mullen and the Contemporary Jazz Voice

That much African American poetry, if not American poetry in general, from the mid- twentieth century onwards bears a deep debt to jazz need almost go without saying. Vari- ously incarnated as a set of recognizable names, a vocabulary of sonic, orthographical, or compositional effects, even as an implicit influence appearing in many poets' descriptions of their work, jazz has provided many African American poems the means for exploring and/or foregrounding their African American-ness. 1 It is often in this poetry that jazz's historical status as African American cultural production dovetails with the music's formal and technical features—its improvisatory aesthetic, for example, or the fact that jazz's history comprises both a body of specific sounds and the ways those sounds have come to bespeak (or not) African American culture as a whole—in ways that open up sizable questions about textuality and its relation to a host of larger phenomenological and/or social experiences. While the development of "jazz poetry" proper perhaps reached its prominence in the period spanning roughly the 1950s to the 1970s (a period loosely mirroring post-bebop jazz's heyday), we still witness today a wealth of creative poets producing jazz-inspired projects. The difference between the last generation of jazz-influenced poets and the more contemporary one, however, is significant: while today's poets still often gain poetic inspi- ration from music created forty (or more) years ago, in the intervening years other strands of experimentalism have slowly but deeply begun to inflect American poetic practices, arguably leading those poets still interested in writing jazz-inspired poetry to reassess some relatively well-entrenched conceptual assumptions. The issue, as I read it, is one of voice: while a jazz performance privileges the revelation of individual voice, "voice" here understood as the physically resonant sonic productions of a (generally black) body pres- ent in time and space, numerous strands of experimental poetics—L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and Oulipo-group poetry, most prominently—have worked to deeply trouble both the assumed coherence of their poems' material sources and the intentional relationship between corporeal author and produced artwork. Indeed, this latter understanding of voice (which might be read as extending an essentially modernist project 2 ) has proven so influential that many contemporary literary critics are likely to gaze with suspicion on any poem that textually asserts itself as the literal voice of its flesh-and-blood author, viewing such a claim as naive at best, reactionary at worst. For those of us interested in poetry's formal properties, this conundrum offers an interesting point of observation. For to take stock of this second idea of voice is to ask some difficult questions of the first: is something like an authentic "jazz poetry" even

Thriving on a riff: jazz &amp; blues influences in African American literature and film

Acknowledgements Introduction: You've Got to be Jazzistic I. MUSIC, IMAGE, AND IDENTITY 1. You Ain't Got to Be Black to beBlack: Music, Race Consciousness, and Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Mojo Hand 2. Blackface Minstelstry and Jazz Signification in Hollywood's Early Sound Era II. JAZZ, BLUES, AND LITERATURE 3. Thanks, Jack, for That: The 'Strange Legacies' of Sterling Brown 4. Songlines: An Interview with Michael S. Harper 5. Synthesizing the Hoodoo of Voodoo: The Music as [Dis]embodied Hero in Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo 6. Paul Beatty's White Boy Shuffle Blues: Jazz Poetry, John Coltrane, and the Post-Soul Aesthetic 7. Giving Voice: An Interview with Jayne Cortez 8. Out of this World: Music and Spirit in the Writings of Nathaniel Macket and Amiri Baraka III. MUSIC, IMAGE, AND IDENTITY - II 9. Blaxsploitation Bird: Ross Russell's Pulp Addiction 10. The Many Faces of Miles Davis IV. JAZZ, BLUES, AND FILM 11. A Rebus of Democratic Slants and Angles: the Have and Have Not, Racial Representation and Musical Performance in a Democracy at War 12. No Brotherly Love: Hollywood Jazz, Racial Prejudice and John Lewis's Score for Odds Against Tomorrow 13. Anatomy of a Movie: Duke Ellington and 1950s Film Scoring V. EPISTROPHY 14. Jumping Tracks: The Path of Conduction

Special Tracks Invite You to Customize Your Meeting

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article APA InstituteFull AccessSpecial Tracks Invite You to Customize Your MeetingJacqueline Maus Feldman, M.D.Jacqueline Maus FeldmanSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:4 Jul 2008https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.43.13.0023Chicago skylinePhoto courtesy of Chicago Convention and Tourism BureauGo for the razzle dazzle. Go for the pizza. Go for the jazz poetry. But most of all, go for APA's Institute on Psychiatric Services, which is being held in—you guessed it—Chicago from October 2 to 5.As chair of the institute's Scientific Program Committee, I want to extend an invitation for you to join us at APA's smaller, more intimate meeting. The beautiful (and newly renovated) Palmer House Hilton will serve as the backdrop for what is shaping up to be the best psychiatric meeting of the year, with CME credits and CEUs available for many disciplines (physicians, psychologists, nurses, social workers, and counselors).The Art Institute of ChicagoPhoto courtesy of Chicago Convention and Tourism BureauFollowing our theme of “From Patient to Partner: Transforming Systems of Care,” we have fashioned an incredible program. Just to give you a taste of the curriculum: a debate between proponents for single-payer medicine versus the AMA's point of view; lectures, workshops, and symposia covering a broad range of topics sure to answer your clinical questions; a Recovery Celebration to interface with consumers; an APA-community outreach to offer clinical updates by renowned scientific leaders; a new format called“ Practical Pearls” with leading clinicians ready to discuss those things that throw us for a loop in our day-to-day practice—for example, how to publish a paper, how to prepare for court, what to do if the media call, how to teach public psychiatry, DBT and CBT with patients who are psychotic—and poster sessions that will knock your socks off! Child psychiatry? Got it covered (adolescents will be coming in to tell how they want to be treated). Advocacy? Come on down. Psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery models? They're here!The Chicago Theatre is one of many theaters in a city that offers some of the best and most varied entertainment choices outside of New York.Photo courtesy of Chicago Convention and Tourism BureauTracks have been designed to meet the needs of members-in-training (starting with the Lilly Chief Residents Leadership Track, ending with presentations by APA/Bristol-Myers Squibb Fellows). On Saturday morning, October 4, the “Career Counseling and Career Development” forum will allow residents, early career psychiatrists, and anyone who's thinking about changing the course of their career to meet one on one with national experts in public psychiatry. The Health Services Research track is planned, APA's OMNA (Office of Minority and National Affairs) on Tour will offer an innovative curriculum and a community depression education event, and the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists has designed a full-day track. On Saturday evening, there will be a “Conversations” event sponsored by the American Psychiatric Foundation.On Sunday, October 5, there will be a full-day training session titled“ Working With Homeless Mentally Ill Individuals.”Our local representatives assure us that Chicago is easy to get to and is breathtaking in the fall. The area around the meeting will be replete with music, concerts, sports, shopping, and museums, and upon arrival you will get a “Best of Chicago Synopsis (like pizza and jazz) to get you started. With all this, and more, how can you resist? Come on! Learn, network, play, and earn CME credits and CEUs. I'll see you there. ▪Jacqueline Maus Feldman, M.D., is chair of APA's Scientific Program Committee for the Institute on Psychiatric Services. ISSUES NewArchived

Shook Up

Shook Up Sascha Feinstein (bio) Something about his ambivalence, how he sluggishly relinquished his limbs into the rowboat to search for his missing wife. I was eight. What did I know of marriage or murder, though a year later, a local said I was right, told my mother no bay current could force a body beneath a rock, not like that, at least. But he got off. If my parents were still alive, perhaps they'd remember more, though it hardly matters. A man dove with his wife, bear-hugged her, knocked the oxygen from her mouth till she drowned, then wedged her body so it might appear she snagged her leg and panicked. Shook up, the lifeguard said when I told her he did it. You should have seen when he first came to shore. Sascha Feinstein Sascha Feinstein won the Hayden Carruth Award for his poetry collection Misterioso. He has published two critical books, Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present and, as coeditor with Yusef Komunyakaa, The Jazz Poetry Anthology and its companion volume, The Second Set. His next book, Ask Me Now: Conversations on Jazz & Literature, will be published later in the year by Indiana University Press. He codirects the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and edits Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, which he founded ten years ago. Copyright © 2007 The Curators of the University of Missouri

Night &amp; Day

Night & Day Sascha Feinstein (bio) Say the whole day could be Count Basie, so you leap out of bed already dressed in what Singaporeans call "casual chic," get pumped up on pancakes and coffee already made, right?—because, of course, you have millions, and are in love, and she loves you (get this) for your mind. Out the door, with your arm around her waist, and suddenly you know how to dance merengue, you're a star being filmed while gondolas glisten overhead, releasing mile-long, sherbet-colored ribbons. Yes . . . and every three or four minutes, the day's eclipsed—that necessary pause between tunes—before the arrival of the sun, warming the earth with its time-delayed light. Sascha Feinstein Sascha Feinstein won the Hayden Carruth Award for his poetry collection Misterioso. He has published two critical books, Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present and, as coeditor with Yusef Komunyakaa, The Jazz Poetry Anthology and its companion volume, The Second Set. His next book, Ask Me Now: Conversations on Jazz & Literature, will be published later in the year by Indiana University Press. He codirects the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and edits Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, which he founded ten years ago. Copyright © 2007 The Curators of the University of Missouri

Swedish Sleds

Swedish Sleds Sascha Feinstein (bio) Two boys slid down a hill and one crossed a road that defined their small town by the mere lack of traffic, a road twisting through the bypass before plunging down- country. People talked of the road for months before it was built: less time to go North, but who leaves anymore? Two boys slid down a hill, and neither heard or saw the logging truck, and the one who slid between the axles— my uncle—grew up to praise luck, to fear Scandinavian fate, Thor's fierce hammer, that bolt of destiny executing delirious youth. Sixty years later, he can't quote his best friend's last words— "I'll cross the road before you"—without a shot glass of chilled aquavit. Sascha Feinstein Sascha Feinstein won the Hayden Carruth Award for his poetry collection Misterioso. He has published two critical books, Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present and, as coeditor with Yusef Komunyakaa, The Jazz Poetry Anthology and its companion volume, The Second Set. His next book, Ask Me Now: Conversations on Jazz & Literature, will be published later in the year by Indiana University Press. He codirects the creative writing program at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and edits Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, which he founded ten years ago. Copyright © 2007 The Curators of the University of Missouri

Blows like a Horn: Beat Writing, Jazz, Style, and Markets in the Transformation of U.S. Culture; Notes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry

Book Review| December 01 2005 Blows like a Horn: Beat Writing, Jazz, Style, and Markets in the Transformation of U.S. Culture; Notes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry Scott Saul Scott Saul Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2005) 77 (4): 862–864. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-77-4-862 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Scott Saul; Blows like a Horn: Beat Writing, Jazz, Style, and Markets in the Transformation of U.S. Culture; Notes to Make the Sound Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry. American Literature 1 December 2005; 77 (4): 862–864. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-77-4-862 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. 2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

A Bibliography of Jazz Poetry Criticism

We have assembled this bibliography to address a gap in the recent publication of materials relating to music and literature. Although there are recent bibliographic tools on the subject of and fiction (cf. Richard N. Albert, An Annotated Bibliography of Jazz Fiction and Jazz Fiction Criticism [Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996]), there is at present no comparable general aide for the study of and poetry. In offering a guide to poetry criticism, the following bibliography should be considered a companion piece to Sascha Feinstein's A Bibliographic Guide to Jazz Poetry (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998), a useful and exhaustive index of jazz poems in English. By bringing together materials from a wide range of sources--including anthologies, books, dissertations, journalism, critical essays, interviews, liner notes, and reviews-we hope to provide a resource for future critical work on the subject.

An Annotated Bibliography of Jazz Fiction and Jazz Fiction Criticism (review)

A work of immense value to those interested in both jazz and literature, this bibliography is a comprehensive compilation showing that "jazz and blues, in varying degrees, have made their mark in fiction" (Preface). Albert, who edited From Blues to Bop: A Collection of Jazz Fiction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1990), recognizes that in recent years, jazz, as a popular form, has come to the foreground, exemplified by the CD revolution, a number of important film treatments of jazz figures, and the proliferation of historical texts on jazz. Numerous jazz magazines are also a testament to the vitality of the music. Furthermore, jazz poetry has also developed as a literary genre, notably represented in The Jazz Poetry Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991), edited by Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Body and Soul: Bob Kaufman's Golden Sardine

The poetry of sound ... marks the beginning of a new era ... of revolt against the trite outworn language of the understandable. (Langston Hughes, qtd. in Rampersad 64) If jazz is music of revolt, it is a revolt towards more natural, wholesome, normal human relationships. (Kenneth Rexroth 64) My head is a bony guitar, strung with tongues, plucked by fingers & nails (Bob Kaufman, Cranial Guitar 82) One day in February 1926, musicians Lil Harlin, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, and Johnny St. Cyr, along with a young trumpet player from New Orleans, prepared to make their second recording for Okeh Records. The young trumpeter had received quite a bit of notoriety as a protege of King Oliver and had acquired the reputation of being one of the exciting innovators of this new, hot music called The group was performing a song called Heebie Jeebies. But something went wrong during the recording process, and Louis Armstrong leaned into the microphone and began singing a series of nonsensical syllables, slightly mimicking the tone and timber of his horn. This new sound was to create a vocal sensation called scat, placing emphasis on the human voice as an additionally important component in jazz music. Armstrong's recording of Heebie Jeebies was The Hot Five's first hit record and transformed the direction of jazz. During that same year, Langston Hughes's jazz-influenced collection of poems The Weary Blues w as published. And, somewhere in New Orleans, Louisiana, two-year-old Bob Kaufman was probably uttering his first full sentence. Louis Armstrong's experimentation during that 1926 recording had a major impact not only on jazz singing but on poetry as well, for several African American poets began using a similar technique. In his excellent book The Power of Black Music, Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., quotes a 1955 study in which Willis Lawrence James provides insightful speculation on the folk origins of scat singing in the vocals of Armstrong and Cab Calloway, who somehow found the trick of using old folk cry principles to supplement the normal means of singing.... Being gifted in voice projection, Calloway invented or adopted a series of nonsense syllables and fitted them into his songs of jazz rhythms. When this was done, people realized the thing as a part of themselves, but they did not know why. They did not realize that they were listening to the cries of their vegetable man, their train caller, their charcoal vendor, their primitive ancestors, heated in the hot crucible of jazz, by the folk genius of Calloway and Armstrong until they ran into a new American alloy. It is possible that neither Calloway nor Armstrong realized what took place. If so, the more remarkable. The response of the orchestra in imitating the cries of Armstrong and Calloway carried the cry into the orchestra itself. (qtd. in Floyd 117) James's observations can be extended to apply to non-musical African American art forms as well. Several poets from Langston Hughes to Amiri Baraka have made use of scat singing by placing runs of nonsensical syllables at crucial junctures within the text when language seems to collapse. In jazz poetry, scat phrasing acts as a kind of verbal release that alludes to the instrumental quality of the human voice. Moreover, scat transcends conventional notions of meaning and emphasizes the importance of music as a key ingredient of the text. Armstrong's scat singing also influenced the singing technique of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie, who first began recording bebop in 1944 with saxophonist Charlie Parker. Both Armstrong and Gillespie used scat singing because it could expand the musical ideas they were expressing through their horns. Although their scat vocabularies were unintelligible, they had in them a rebellious quality that defied the musical status quo. Gillespie expressed the connection between bebop and language in his autobiography To BE, or Not. …

Jazz poetry: from the 1920s to the present

Jazz Poetry: An Introduction The Sin in Syncopation Weary Blues, Harlem Galleries, and Southern Roads From Obscurity to Fad: Jazz and Poetry in Performance Chasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker and the 1nraptured Poets of the Fifties The John Coltrane Poem Goodbye Porkpie Hat: Farewells and Remembrances An Enormous Yes: Contemporary Poems Index

The Second set: the jazz poetry anthology, v.2

The Second set: the jazz poetry anthology, v.2

The Jazz Poetry Anthology.

...in a class by itself...sensitive, moving, and powerful jazz imagery...the perfect companion to listening to good -Jazziz Magazine In the course of the history of jazz, there have been only a few articles that get to the core of the meaning of jazz. These poems hit it right on the head, and the book is certainly essential for anyone who is interested in our -Dizzy Gillespie To those interested in the impact of jazz upon the poetry of our century I recommend this anthology altogether without reservation. -John Lucas, JazzTimes ...essential...Its virtues are varied and copious, and not the least among them is discovering a writer whose work is new to you. -Los Angeles Reader What makes this work most enjoyable is knowing the music and musicians and using that knowledge to understand and judge the poets' reactions to the elements in the music that please and inspire us. -MultiCultural Review Filled with a variety of form, rhythm, and sound, this anthology is an absolute MUST for anyone who is even remotely interested in jazz and modern literature. -David Baker Since the turn of the century, poets have responded to jazz in all its musical and cultural overtones. The poems here cover the range of jazz itself: from early blues to free jazz and experimental music. Among the 132 poets included are James Baldwin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Mina Loy, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. This anthology represents the broad appreciation for jazz as poetic inspiration, not only from the Beat movement but from writers across the decades and around the world.

"Lines of Tempered Steel": An Interview With Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa has published seven collections of poems: Dedications and Other Darkhorses (1977), Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979), Copacetic (1984), I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head (1986), Toys in a Field (1987), Dien Cai Dau (1988), and February in Sydney (1989). At present, Komunyakaa has, among other projects, two books of poetry in progress: Magic City (poems about his childhood in rural Louisiana) and Thieves of Paradise (poems about his experiences and life in Australia). Poems in these forthcoming collections have appeared in such literary journals as The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, and River Styx. Komunyakaa's poetry arising from his experiences as a Vietnam veteran-collected in Toys in a Field and Dien Cai Dau-has attracted much attention: Dien Cai Dau has gone into a second edition and was listed in the 1988 Young Adults/American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults List; several poems from this collection have also been translated into French, German, and Italian. Komunyakaa's place within the growing canon of soldier-poets was solidified in 1989 by the inclusion of his work in W. D. Ehrhart's anthology Unaccustomed Mercy: Soldier-Poets of the Vietnam War, which definitively identifies the twelve best Vietnam-veteran poets currently writing. Another important focus in Komunyakaa's work is jazz. Many poems in his earlier work, particularly in Copacetic and I Apologize for the Eyes in my Hoad, either center on jazz as subject or mimetically reproduce the music-poem as jazz improvisation. Recently, Komunyakaa appeared in a panel discussion on and with poets William Matthews and Robert Kelly at Macon College. He is also currently co-editing, with poet and jazz saxophonist Sascha Feinstein, The Jazz Poetry Anthology, forthcoming in 1991. Komunyakaa's recent chapbook February in Sydney melds this interest in jazz with a fascination with Australia, especially Aboriginal poetry and culture. Komunyakaa has received many awards for his poetry. Perhaps the most prestigious of these were two Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981 and 1987. His collection I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head won the San Francisco Poetry Center Award for the best book of poetry published in 1986. He also currently holds the Lilly Professorship of Poetry at Indiana University. It is in this context that I know Yusef Komunyakaa. While I was a student in the MFA program at Indiana University, Yusef was my primary mentor. It was also through his influence that a burgeoning interest in poetry written by Vietnam veterans eventually coalesced into my doctoral dissertation. But his greatest effect on me has been as a teacher of creative writing; Yusef is that rarest of writing teachers-a person who does not preach write as I do but rather write as best as you can, in your own voice and style. He is extraordinarily adept at psyching out