Jazz Across Movements

 While both the jazz poetry from the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz poetry from the Black Arts Movement have some similarities in form and style, they have many major differences in tone and meaning. The style of the Harlem Renaissance embraces the roaring twenties and self pride in their black identity. The tone of reading jazz poetry from this time seems more upbeat, like the poets are attempting to channel jazz and dance into their art. In contrast, the Black Arts Movement provided a new restructuring of jazz poetry as a way to let out frustration from the slow progress of getting equal rights. Forming at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement emphasized putting feelings into poetry and furthering their fight for equality in the art that poets make. 

Both styles of jazz poetry contain a collage of music, sounds and voices that the poet wanted to include, and occasionally arrange the words on the page in a non-standard manner in order to have a deeper effect. However, at a first glance, this is where the similarities end. The Coltrane poems we read in class have a much more abrasive style and word choice to them compared to the fun-loving and speak-easy mimicking style of the Harlem Renaissance poems. During the Harlem Renaissance, the emphasis in jazz poems was on learning to love yourself for who you are, and embracing their black identity. By the time of the Black Arts Movement, jazz poems were being used as a way to further the civil rights movement, while also providing an outlet for their frustration and rage.

If you compare the scenes from Langston Hughes’ The Cat And The Saxophone (2 A.M.), which likely takes place in a speakeasy bar to Sonia Sanchez’s a/coltrane/poem you can see many differences in the ways they chose to express themselves. In The Cat And The Saxophone (2 A.M.), the poem transitions back and forth from a jazz song to a couple flirting at the bar, “BUT MY BABY / Sure. Kiss me, / DON’T LOVE NOBODY / daddy.” Throughout the poem the overall tone is light, and seems to serve as a way to incorporate the experience of jazz and the bars of the time. However, in a/coltrane/poem, Sanchez expresses her frustration with the slow progress of the civil rights movement, “no mornin bells / are ringen here. only the quiet / aftermath of assassinations. / but i saw yo/murder/ / the massacre / of all blk/musicians. planned / in advance.” She then follows this fracturing with written expressions of Coltrane playing his saxophone and the chant of “a love supreme” at the end of A Love Supreme: Part I (Acknowledgement). Between these two poems, you can see how they share different “voices” and fracturization, but the tone is visibly different. In a/coltrane/poem, it actively talks about the current events of the time, and the poet’s frustration with the violence is expressed in her word choice and organization of the poem on the page. 

The Black Arts Movement wanted to give meaning to the art that black artists created, and destroy the concept of “art for art’s sake.” However, the Harlem Renaissance was creating the ideas of black art for black people, and created the genre of jazz poetry as a freeing way to express themselves. In both cases, poets used jazz poetry to advance their movements and express their feelings. Although the movements were separated by 4 decades, they both had similar bases to build off of, and an underlying wish for equality and the creation of black art.

Comments

  1. Jonathan ChenApril 27, 2026 at 12:33 PM

    hi Karenna, I agree that the major difference between jazz poetry from the Harlem Renaissance differ from the Black Arts Movement is the tone and meaning behind the poem. Specifically the time periods they arose from influenced their function. The Harlem Renaissance was during a time where people were excited, and it was a time of black artistic innovation. Meanwhile, the Black Arts Movement occurs after significant time has passed without meaningful change. At their core, though, they were still about black identity and rights.

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  2. MahdiApril 27, 2026 at 12:55 PM

    Hi Karenna, I like how you compared these two important eras in the history of African-American Literature, explaining their differences in the context of their respective time periods. It makes sense that someone during the Harlem Renaissance would write in a more hopeful and uplifted tone, as such a movement with the African American community was completely new, and the future was looking bright. But by the Black Arts Movement, there is a sense that the fight for civil rights was taking too long and action had to be taken immediately. Overall, great post!

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  3. AldoMay 3, 2026 at 4:31 PM

    Karenna, you've done an excellent job at showing the difference between the jazz poetry of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement. During the Harlem Renaissance, it emphasized pride, joy, and hope more than having an aggressively political purpose. But during the Black Arts Movement, it came to be much more abrasive and frustrated. It's clear in your writing how the jazz poetry of this era was the natural evolution of that of the much more hopeful Harlem Renaissance after previous movements had failed to make much of a difference.

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