Sample Student Research Project 2016: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2016:
Essay
Adrian Russell
15
November 2016
Free Verse Poetry: The Unsung Jazz of American Heritage
Jazz has been hailed by many as America’s one true art form; our gift to
the rest of the world. Longing for freedom from the forced inheritance of
oppressive scales and time signatures, Jazz offered a new place for musicians to
wander and find a sound that represents their own identity apart from the
popular musicians that came before them. Similarly, in literature, the birth and
evolution of free verse poetry has provided a means of exploration and
self-discovery for many writers. In fact, the similarities between free verse
poetry and jazz are remarkable. While also predominantly cultivated in early
America, free verse poetry is not collectively regarded as an American art form.
However, I contend that free verse poetry is the unsung jazz of American
heritage, and its presence has left a lasting effect on the literature and
poetry of the world, much like jazz altered the state and future of music as the
world knew it.
In
explaining the birth and evolution of free verse poetry, T.S. Eliot claimed “It
was a revolt against dead form, and a preparation for new form or for the
renewal of the old” (Norman 346). More explicitly, Eliot added that “Forms have
to be broken to be remade,” and “Every revolution in poetry is apt to be . . . a
return to common speech” (Norman 347, Gioia and Kennedy 828). This explanation
parallels the spirit of early America during the American Renaissance.
By
the late 1700s, American colonies were attempting to break free of the social,
politic, and religious forms imposed on them by British rule. The debatable
righteousness of such forms was insignificant in comparison to the need for the
forms to be broken. American settlers simply did not want to be told how to
worship, think, speak, or live. This disposition in regards to form and rule
became ingrained in American culture and consequently inherent in the literature
that was spawned during the American Renaissance. It was during the American
Renaissance that free verse poetry was championed by Walt Whitman, encouraging
many other writers, even internationally, to follow suite and explore the merit
of poetry without fixed form.
Whitman is consistently regarded as “America’s greatest poet” and was the
first poet to write extensively in free verse. The essence of Walt Whitman’s
free verse, and inclination to explore poetry in the form of seemingly “everyday
speech”, is best described as “Nature without check with original energy”, a
line from his “Song of Myself” (19). While likely criticized quite harshly at
the time for not adhering to familiar forms, Whitman was unequivocally ahead of
his time, and the progression away from typical poetic form seems inevitable,
given the social, religious, and political landscape of early America.
Though departing from common
poetic forms, one cannot refute that Whitman desired to retain, embrace, and
hopefully progress the musical nature of poetry with poems titled “I Sing the
Body Electric”, “Song to Myself”, and “Beat! Beat! Drums!”. Historically
speaking, “Poetry and song were originally one art, and even today the two forms
remain closely related. We celebrate the beauty of a poem by praising its
'musi'” just as we compliment a great song by calling it 'poetic'” (Gioia and
Kennedy 805). It is likely that Whitman would have agreed with T.S. Eliot when
he said, “There are possibilities for verse which bear some analogy to the
development of a theme by different groups of instruments” (Norman 348). Free
verse, without following a poetic meter or a particular rhyme scheme, does,
however, rely on musicality and the rhythm of language to make the poem sing.
Whitman’s use of alliteration is like a note in an improvisational jazz solo,
returning to the root of the scale every so often to remind the song that it is
still a song.
In connection to free verse poetry, American jazz was similarly born out
of a revolt from dead forms of music. The African-American culture had yet to be
popularly represented, and blues music was so simplistic in form that it could
be easily duplicated and exploited by white musicians, who were at the helm of
music production at the time. Free jazz burst onto the scene without the limits
of formal structures, refrains, or familiar scales, and it was difficult for
many to define. It may be possible that the African-American culture may have
been drawn to the themes of equality and freedom prevalent throughout Whitman’s
work, inspiring them to eventually break free from musical traditions. Almost
prophetically, Whitman stated in 1876, “the poetry of the future aims at the
free expression of emotion . . . and to arouse and initiate, more than to define
or finish” (Gioia and Kennedy 899). Though Whitman was describing his work and
the poetry of the future, if taken in the context of music, this quote could be
used to describe jazz and its role in shaping the music of the future.
Similar to how Whitman may have inspired jazz, at least in terms of
freedom of expression, jazz, in turn, inspired future American poets to employ
free verse techniques in collaboration with the concepts of jazz music. Langston
Hughes was one of the first poets to meld music and poetry in this way. In an
essay titled “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes “describes the
cultural pressures that he felt black writers faced to conform” and “He goes on
to defend the characteristic use in his poems of language and forms derived from
jazz” by saying his work “is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances,
sharp and impudent interjections, broken rhythms, and passages sometimes in the
manner of the jam session…punctuated by riffs, runs, breaks, and disc-tortions
of the music of a community in transition” (MacGowan 79). In the same way
Whitman’s description of his work could be used to describe the spirit of jazz,
Hughes’s definition of his work, which is explicitly inspired by jazz music,
could just as easily be used to be descriptive of Whitman’s poems in a time of
similar cultural transition. After making this connection, it would difficult to
argue that free verse and jazz are not conceptually intertwined.
A further distinction of the similarities shared by free verse and jazz
would be that they were both relatively conceived on American soil by the
descendants of immigrants, then carried on and further explored in conjunction
with other mediums of expression by immigrants of another race, only to be
adopted by the population as a collective. For instance, Whitman pioneered free
verse, which potentially inspired certain aspects of jazz music, and then
inspired Langston Hughes and poets immediately following the time period of
Hughes, such as Allen Ginsberg. Early jazz was pioneered by Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington, who also inspired the poets Langston Hughes and Allen Ginsberg,
while Benny Goodman eventually became one of the first white Americans to
explore jazz and spread the art form to other facets of American culture. Both
art forms were sources of cross-cultural inspiration. At this point, audiences
take jazz and free verse for granted because they are easily available, forgetting
how both were cultivated in similar fashion on American soil in times of
tumultuous change.
Once a form of art becomes taken for granted, it almost seems to grow out
of fashion, though by that time, other cultures are beginning to pick up on it
and allow it to evolve to suit their expressions. One could claim that even Walt
Whitman based his free verse style on vers libre, which many incorrectly label
as the French version of free verse. However, vers libre relies on a
predetermined number of syllables and “strophe” units to comprise its form. A
better explanation of how these specific art forms of free and formless
expression made their way around the world begins in a time after “the outbreak
of war in Europe in 1914” when “a number of European painters retreated to New
York” which “became a center for international avant-garde activities” (MacGowan
16). The “ready-made” art of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia “challenged the
authority of viewer-imposed conventions upon the artist’s activities” (MacGowan
16). Their “prefabricated” art “challenged . . . Romantic foregrounding of originality
and emotional expression,” giving way to “Imagism” and its “emphasis upon
non-traditional rhythms, the primacy of the moment, free verse, and economy of
expression” (MacGowan 16). This caused American poetry to once again take its
own direction as other major countries were preoccupied with war. “Meanwhile,
the London poetry scene lost some of its most promising poets in the war, and
D.H. Lawrence began travels that took him anywhere but England, looking in his
poetry to Whitman as a guide to what poetry could be” (MacGowan 17). D.H.
Lawrence, after immigrating and settling in Taos, NM, went on to use free verse,
musicality and allusion to music, along with his paintings, to bring freedom of
expression back into America as an immigrant, completing the circle of travel
for free verse and solidifying it as an art form recognized and respected around
the world.
At relatively the same time, New Orleans Jazz was booming in the 1910s,
beginning with ragtime, brass marching bands, and eventually leading to the
polyphonic improvisation developed by Louis Armstrong. Just like other American
artists and painters of the time, many musicians visited Europe during and after
the war. Underground live performances began to ignite European interest in this
new American music. Django Reinhardt, a Belgian guitarist, was influenced by
this new wave of American jazz sweeping through Europe and developed what came
to be known as “Gypsy Jazz”. Gypsy jazz made its way around Europe, catching the
ear of American soldiers, visitors, and musicians, which made its way back to
America, spurring the birth of swing music. Swing music was a return to form,
but was directly derived from the essence of American jazz. Again, the circle of
expression made its way back home. After the swing era, jazz found its way back
into the lap of African-American culture in the form of Bebop, which was
developing in the underground club scene of the 1940s. It was this movement that
inspired the beat poetry of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and two of the
best-selling poetry collections of all time, respectively,
On the Road and
Howl.
Hinging on Whitman’s poetry yet again as an analogous explanation of how these
art forms gained so much momentum, his poem “There Was a Child Went Forth” seems
to provide the necessary imagery:
There
was a child went forth every day,
And
the first object he look’d upon, that object he became
And
that object became part of him or a certain part of the day,
Or
for many years or stretching cycles of years
………………………………………………………………….
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and
will always go forth every day. (Whitman 1-4, 39)
This child can be viewed as representing freedom of expression. It represents
the evolution of expression. It looks upon objects and becomes that object like
Whitman’s free verse became what it was because of the nature Whitman was
observing around him. Other “children” saw the object that Whitman’s free verse
expression became and thus became that object as well. However, that object that
is now comprised of free expression is also a part of that wandering boy. Time
goes on with more boys seeing and becoming objects as they too become a part of
him. Vers libre became free verse, which became jazz, which became beat poetry,
which then inspired so many of the international forms of music and poetry we
enjoy today, will be discussed tomorrow, and will “always go forth every day”
(Whitman 39).
The
influence that Walt Whitman’s free verse and jazz music’s similar freedom of
expression has had on the evolution of music and poetry, in tandem, are
undeniable. Free verse and jazz continue to thrive and inspire artists today.
Both art forms are present throughout the world, however, as stated, free verse
poetry is not widely regarded as an “American art form”, even though it was
predominantly cultivated in American soil. In defending free verse as not being
merely “bad prose”, Walt Whitman most eloquently posed that “(for Americans more
than any other people.) is it too much to say that by the shifted combinations
of the modern mind the whole underlying theory of first-class verse has
changed?” (Gioia and Kennedy 899). It is after reading a statement of such
American pride and willingness to accept change, revolution, and evolution that
I must again contend that free verse poetry is the unsung jazz of American
heritage, and its presence has left a lasting effect on the literature and
poetry of the world, much like jazz altered the state and future of music as the
world knew it.
Works
Cited
Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy.
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Longman, 1998.
MacGowan, Christopher. Twentieth Century
American Poetry. Blackwell, 2004.
Norman, Charles. Poets on Poetry. The
Free Press, 1962.
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Modern
American Poetry,
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/whitman/song.htm. Accessed 14
November 2016.
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA