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Words into Sound: an Exploration of Poetry and Jazz/New Music

ENGL 111.302
instructor(s):
R 1:30-4:30

"Words into Sound: an Exploration of Poetry and Jazz/New Music" examines poetic composition and collaboration through several lens: historical, cultural and structural frames. Music, often thought too abstract for words, escapes the lyric trap to meet words as elements of composition, inseparable from the form. Class will listen and write/score, using words to chisel, count time, pattern and give texture, not as accompaniment, but as a voicing of the moment of performance. The historical range--from the post war Bebops and Beats to the Black Arts movement to the performance/spoken word pulse of today. We'll look/listen to Langston Hughes, Babs Gonzalez, Tom Waits, Lord Buckley, Amiri Baraka, George Lewis, Nate Mackey, Ann Waldman, Tracie Morris and Sekous Sundiata and others who have collaborated to create poetry/music compositions that explore language terrain with complexity and insight.

 

The course will feature visits to the class by important and interesting
figures in the jazz/poetry world.

Enrollments in this special creative writing seminar are strictly limited.
Students who want to take the course should send a short email application
to

              jazzpoetry@writing.upenn.edu

and send:

      * your name, year, major
      * a very brief description of your interest in the course
      * any relevant experience or background 

fulfills requirements