Post-Jazz Poetics

JENNIFER D. RYAN Assistant Professor of English at Buffalo State College, USA.

"With utmost sophistication, Ryan explores the contextual dynamics of contemporary African-American feminist poetry. Using the work of five post-jazz women poets as the material for analysis, she identifies varied ideological underpinnings of artistic practices. She maps out inter-medial and inter-discursive spaces where the poetic engages with the performative, the bodily, the social, and the economic. With its argument built around the most aesthetically productive and politically provoking categories, Post-Jazz Poetics is a major voice in the debate on the present state of African-American letters." - Marek Paryz, Assistant Professor, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw and editor of the Polish Journal for American Studies "Post-Jazz Poetics articulates a discernable, significant, ongoing jazz poetic in the work of five black women poets, a body of work and a group of poets virtually ignored (to date) as a force in literary criticism. Moreover, Ryan does it without formula or reductive analysis. Each author s individual genealogy is respected and, indeed, shown as essential to understanding their particular work in jazz poetry." - Malin Pereira, Professor of English, University of North Carolina atCharlotte and author of Rita Dove s Cosmopolitanism

• Introduction: How Do I Make That Sound? A New Feminist Poetics Finding Her Voice: The Body Politics of Sherley Anne Williams's Blues Nationhood Re-formed: Revolutionary Style and Practice in Sonia Sanchez's Jazz Poetics Talk to Me: Ecofeminist Disruptions in the Jazz Poetry of Jayne Cortez Shape Shifting: The Urban Geographies of Wanda Coleman's Jazz Poetry Jazz's Word for It: Harryette Mullen and the Politics of Intellectualism Conclusion: 'Too Many Books For Our Eyes': Future Politics, Future Poetries