Gordon E. Thompson - Black Music, Black Poetry: Genre, Performance and Authenticity

BLACK MUSIC, BLACK POETRY

Blues and Jazzs Impact on
African American Versification

Edited by
GORDON E. THOMPSON
City College of New York, USA

ASHGATE

Gordon E. Thompson and contributors 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Gordon E. Thompson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Black music, Black poetry : blues and jazzs impact on African American versification/
edited by Gordon E. Thompson.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-2836-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4724-3059-5 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-4724-3060-1 (epub)

1. American poetryAfrican American authorsHistory and criticism. 2. Jazz in literature. 3. English languageRhythm. 4. African AmericansIntellectual life 20th century. I. Thompson, Gordon E., 1958

PS310.J39B57 2014

811.509357dc23

2013035920

ISBN 9781409428367 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472430595 (ebk PDF)

ISBN 9781472430601 (ebk ePUB)

Gordon E. Thompson

Ray Sapirstein

Lauri Ramey

John Edgar Tidwell

David Chinitz

Tony Bolden

Joseph A. Brown

Christopher Winks

Scarlett Higgins

Lisa Mansell

Renee M. Kingan

Michael Coyle

Tony Bolden teaches courses on African-American literature and culture at the University of Kansas. His book Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture was published by University of Illinois Press in 2004. His collection The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. His current book-length project is tentatively titled The Epistemology of Funk.

Joseph A. Brown, S.J., Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Africana Studies, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Brown, a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, is an ordained Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus. After receiving both an M.A. in Afro-American Studies and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, he taught at the University of Virginia and at Xavier University in New Orleans. Brown has published many articles in the area of theology and literature, and has also lectured and published extensively in the area of Black Catholic Theology and Spirituality. Three of his more recent books are: To Stand on the Rock: Meditations on Black Catholic Identity; A Retreat with Thea Bowman and Bede Abram: Leaning on the Lord; and The Sun Whispers, Wait: New and Collected Poems. His poetry is published under the name Luke.

David Chinitz is a professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Which Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes (2013) and T.S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (2003). His essays on Hughes have appeared in Callaloo and American Literary History. He is currently co-editing the sixth volume of The Complete Prose of T.S. Eliot (Johns Hopkins) and A Companion to Modernist Poetry (Wiley-Blackwell).

Michael Coyle is a professor of English at Colgate University, founding president of the Modernist Studies Association, and current president of the T.S. Eliot Society. Publications include Ezra Pound, Popular Genres, and the Discourse of Culture (Penn State); ed. Ezra Pound and African American Modernism (NPF); and ed. with Debra Rae Cohen and Jane Lewty, Broadcasting Modernism (University of Florida). He is a long-time jazz radio DJ and a record reviewer for Cadence.

Joanne Veal Gabbin is a professor of English at James Madison University, where she is executive director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center. She is the author of Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition; editor of Furious Flower: A Revolution in African American Poetry and The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry; and executive producer of the Furious Flower video and DVD series. A dedicated teacher and scholar, she has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching and scholarship. Among them are the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award for her book Sterling A. Brown (1986), the James Madison University Faculty Womens Caucus and Womens Resource Network for Scholarship (1988), and the Outstanding Faculty Award, Virginia State Council of Higher Education. Recently, Dr. Gabbin was the recipient of two faculty awards: the Provosts Award for Distinguished Service and the JMU Alumni Distinguished Faculty Award. In October 2005, Dr. Gabbin was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent. She is also founder and organizer of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective, owner of the 150 Franklin Street Gallery in Harrisonburg, and author of the childrens book I Bet She Called Me Sugar Plum.

Scarlett Higgins is an assistant professor of American Literature at the University of New Mexico. She has published articles in The Langston Hughes Review and The Review of Contemporary Fiction and has a forthcoming article in Arizona Quarterly. She is currently completing a project on the use of collage across media throughout the twentieth century.

Renee M. Kingan is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the College of William and Mary. She earned a B.A. in English from James Madison University, an M.A. in English from George Mason University, and an M.A. in American Studies from William and Mary. Ms. Kingan teaches at the York County School of the Arts in Williamsburg, Virginia, and works as a freelance musician specializing in woodwind instruments. Ms. Kingans research interests include jazz music and American literature. She is writing her dissertation on Jayne Cortezs collaborations with the Firespitters, and her recent publication credits include a piece in The Black Scholar.

Lisa Mansell is a Welsh poet and critic based in Staffordshire, England, where she lectures in Creative Writing at Staffordshire University. She earned her Ph.D. in Critical and Creative Writing from Cardiff University on the topic of Sonority in the Minority. She writes formally and linguistically innovative work that merges the boundaries of identity. Her work has appeared in Adanna, Aught, Blackbox Manifold, ditch, Chanticleer, Equinox, French Literary Review, Open Wide Magazine, Ore and Tears in the Fence, Ceramic Review, and Upstairs at Duroc. She is a member of the Institute for Applied Creative Thinking (IACT) research steering group at Staffordshire University.