Jazz as a model for aesthetics in diaspora poetry: a reading of Edward Brathwaite’s Rights of Passage and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

Abstract

This paper interrogates jazz music as a model for an aesthetic and stylistic device deployed by *Edward Brathwaite and Allen Ginsberg in their poetry. The two poets traverse the literary Worlds of America and the Caribbean respectively, literary called The New World. Edward Brathwaite in his Rights of Passage creates a plethora of sonorous devices that exemplify his jazz aesthetic interest. In the poem, key words serve as notes of the music. He struck a high-pitch note when he indicated in his essay “Jazz and the West Indian Novel” that “Words … are the notes of this new New Orleans music” (i.e. West Indian Literature) (63). In the same vein, Allen Ginsberg employs almost same literary devices that resonate of the jazz technique in his poem Howl. His words in the poem recreate an ambience of the acoustic sounds of jazz music. The poetry is aurally stimulating, and very highly rhythmic. The popular music of the day – jazz – had played an integral part, and formative role in terms of the composition of the poems. The two poets used this poetic form to formulate and tell history and most profoundly, as a form of protest. The recurrence of jazz musical elements in the poems indicate the importance of the principles of repetition, syncopation, rhythm, improvisation and the riff.

*Please note the poet‟s first name will be addressed subsequently as Kamau, his present name, not as Edward as indicated in the studied text.