Yakov Lotovski's The Sound of Jazz translated from Russian by Dimitri Lotovski at Exquisite Corpse has some interesting imagery.
"There is also this huge saxophone.
It sounds like a piece of antique oak furniture that’s being moved.
There is a man attached to it.
Serving."
Much "jazz poetry" doesn't fit the bill. In the sense that Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Mina Loy, or Hart Crane could be considered "jazz" poets because they made reference to it in their work, which isn't the same as producing work that enacts the rhythms being described or uses imagery that evokes convincing portrayals of jazz artists and their compositions, we'll have to come up with a more useful definition. Many writers of the Jazz Age (i.e., 1920s) wrote about the decadence or instability of the times but their writing wasn't jazz influenced per se. True poets influenced by jazz take language and make of it something malleable and molten. Poets such as Amiri Baraka in "Ka'Ba"
call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will[.]
Ray Bremser, Jack Kerouac, and Ted Joans wrote poetry with an oral component that sometimes mirrored the syncopated rhythms of jazz. Poets such as Bob Kaufman often wrote lines that verged on the nonsensical in his flights to mimic the sounds he heard in jazz. In the experimental "Crootey Songo" he wrote,
Derrat slegelations, flo goof babereo
Sorash sho dubies, wago, wailo, wailo
Or, as he wrote in "Jazz Chick"
From the alabaster pools of Jazz
Where music cools hot souls.
Eyes more articulately silent
Than Medusa's thousand tongues.
A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles
reveal her presence singing[.]
2 comments:
I recently was invited to lecture on Bob Kaufman & Jazz Poetry at C.C.A. here in San Francisco. I chose, as an example of authentic jazz poetry, Kaufman's, I,Too, Know What I Am Not. It's a vivid illustration of a Bebop take on Langston Hughes answer to Whitman, I, Too. Just as a jazz-man might, Kaufman takes an interpretative stance from within the Hughes poem, extemporizes the "harmony" and displaces the rhythmic accents. Check it out. Also, I agree with you on Ted Joans. Ishmael Reed recently described Joans as the greatest jazz poet of the 20th century. He may very well be right. As with Kaufman, or Jones/Baraka for that matter, Joans conveys the mood and feeling of jazz, as well as its infamous swing, without any specific allusions to "jazz." Jayne Cortez accomplishes this as well.
Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo" has to be the worst example of an attempt by a poet to capture rhythm on the page,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
although almost everyone writing poetry is somewhat familiar with the poem and it was lauded by Harriet Monroe and none other than William Butler Yeats at the time of its publication.
I think Kaufman, Joans, Baraka, Jayne Cortez, and possibly Ishmael Reed and Will Alexander, are the poets who best capture some essence of what is meant by the word jazz, although they can do that by never referencing the word itself. With Kaufman's work especially I've found myself counting syllables, looking for patterns, because at its best it occasionally has such a songlike quality. What you mention that Kaufman does with the Hughes poem is what a jazz artist would do when introducing a new rendition of someone else's tune--cause it to implode. Thanks for your comment.
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