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1 results

  • 14 - “Wail, Wop”

  • from Part IV - Literary Genres
  • Edited by Michael Borshuk, Texas Tech University
  • Book:
    Jazz and American Culture
    Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023, pp 219-233

  • Summary

    If so much of American poetry from the early twentieth century onward looks to revitalize the genre’s forms and conventions by mining from the national vernacular, then jazz has been both a model for that process and a source of expressive inspiration. This essay looks at the range of American poetic responses to jazz, from the early modernist efforts of poets such as Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Vachel Lindsay, to more contemporary figures like Nathaniel Mackey, Morgan Parker, and Kevin Young. In observing the long shadow that the music has cast on poetic experimentation, this survey also observes variations in identity and perspective and maps the reciprocal relationship between different jazz styles and modern poetics, including the tension between song lyrics and lyric poetry. Ultimately, this essay reveals through a wealth of examples the comprehensive heterogeneity of jazz poetry despite these writers’ shared starting points.