jazz poetry
Syncopated spoken word
Jazz poetry is verse that incorporates the rhythms, improvisation, and spirit of jazz music.
Poets may perform with jazz accompaniment or embed syncopation and blues phrasing into the written text itself.
The form emerged in the Harlem Renaissance and flourished with the Beat Generation: Langston Hughes and the bebop poets brought jazz poetry to the stage.
- bebopFast, complex jazz style
- swing rhythmUneven beat pattern
- Harlem RenaissanceBlack arts explosion, 1920s
- scatImprovised vocal jazz
- spoken wordPoetry delivered aloud
Beat Generation · improvisation · Langston Hughes · syncopation · oral traditions · blue notes · bass line · beatniks · call and response · riff · saxophone · Kerouac · cadence · meter · nightclub · hipster · cool · coffeehouse
- jazzbebop, swing era, hard bop, post-bop, improvisation
- Black Literatureblack literature, black authors, slave narratives, Harlem Renaissance, Toni Morrison
- Black poetryLangston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Harlem Renaissance, spoken word, praise songs
- literary movementsRomanticism, Realism, Modernism, Surrealism, Symbolism
- music & poetryrhythm, harmony, melody, ballads, tempo
- freestyle poetryspoken word, stream of consciousness
jazz poetryiambic pentameter
Unstressed-stressed pattern, five feet
traditional poetry · sonnets · villanelles · classical prosody · blank verse
jazz, poetry, poetic, jazzy, poetically, jazzman, jazziness, poeticize, epic poetry