New Day Jazz

Justin Desmangles

This afternoon, in the 5 o'clock hour, I am joined by Claudia Moreno Pisano, discussing her most recent book, Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn: The Collected Letters.


From the end of the 1950s through the middle of the 1960s, Amiri Baraka & Edward Dorn, two self-consciously avant-garde poets, fostered an intense friendship primarily through correspondence. The early 1960s found both poets just beginning to publish and becoming public figures. Bonding around their commitment to new and radical forms of poetry and culture, Dorn and Baraka created an interracial friendship at precisely the moment when the Civil Rights Movement was becoming a powerful force in national politics. The major premise of the Dorn-Jones friendship as developed through their letters was artistic, but the range of subjects in the correspondence shows an incredible intersection between the personal and the public, providing a schematic map of what was so vital in postwar American culture to those living through it.

Their letters offer a vivid picture of American lives connecting around poetry during a tumultuous time of change and immense creativity. Reading through these correspondences allows access into personal biographies, and through these biographies, profound moments in American cultural history open themselves to us in a way not easily found in official channels of historical narrative and memory.


“Baraka and Dorn were at the very heart of two of the most significant developments in American literature in the decades after World War II, the so-called New American Poetry and the Black Arts Movement. That fact alone makes this book one that will interest scholars and poets in many otherwise divergent communities. The letters commence near the beginnings of these two artists’ careers. We not only witness the poetic development of these two crucial figures, but we witness it against the background of the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement into the Black Power era. And both writers have much to say about the unfolding revolution in jazz that was taking place alongside the explosive social transformations of American society. The book is filled with significant surprises.”—Aldon Lynn Nielsen, author of Reading Race

“These two poets had to struggle to make a living. Baraka was making a transition during the years he corresponded with Dorn from the predominantly white New York avant-garde scene to the black nationalist politics of the mid and late 1960s. Through much of this period Baraka worked tirelessly on Dorn’s behalf just to get his manuscripts published. These letters give readers a sense of the generous collaboration of avant-garde poets in the 1960s.”—Robert 
von Hallberg, author of American Poetry and Culture, 1945–1980

Genre

Jazz

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Sunday 3/08/2015 @ 3:00PM - 6:00PM
ArtistSongAlbumLabelComments
Amiri Baraka Class Struggle in Music I New Music - New Poetry India Navigation
Amiri Baraka Class Struggle in Music II New Music - New Poetry India Navigation
David Murray B/T Low Class Conspiracy Adelphi Records
Cassandra Wilson I'm Old Fashioned Blue Skies JMT
Cassandra Wilson Sweet Lorraine Blue Skies JMT
Airbreak
Cecil Taylor Calling it the 9th The 8th hat ART
Cecil Taylor Cun-Un-Un-Un-An Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) Soul Note
The Six Winds Monk's Mood Elephants Can Dance Sackville
Airbreak
Norman Pritchard Gyre's Galax New Jazz Poets Broadside Records
Harry Partch Ring Around the Moon Plectra & Percussion Dances Gate 5 Records
John Coltrane India The Other Village Vanguard Tapes Impulse!
Gwendolyn Brooks Song of the Front Yard Anthology of Negro Poets Folkways
Gwendolyn Brooks The Preacher Ruminates Anthology of Negro Poets Folkways
Gwendolyn Brooks The Children of the Poor, Sonnet No. 2 Anthology of Negro Poets Folkways
Joseph Jarman - Don Moye Ode to Wilbur Ware Black Paladins Black Saint
Airbreak
Johnny Dyani Magwaza Witchdoctor's Son SteepleChase
Ornette Coleman & Prime Time Space Church (Continuous Services) In All Languages Caravan of Dreams
Ornette Coleman Quartet Space Church (Continuous Services) excerpt In All Languages Caravan of Dreams
Airbreak
Interview with Claudia Moreno Pisano by Justin Desmangles Interview with Claudia Moreno Pisano by Justin Desmangles Interview with Claudia Moreno Pisano by Justin Desmangles Interview with Claudia Moreno Pisano by Justin Desmangles
Ornette Coleman & Prime Time Space Church (Continuous Services) excerpt In All Languages Caravan of Dreams
Ornette Coleman Quartet Space Church (Continuous Services) excerpt In All Languages Caravan of Dreams
Airbreak
Roscoe Mitchell Little Suite Sound Delmark