Paying tribute to jazz stars in their printed fiction and verse was important for Beat poets.
Paying tribute to jazz stars in their printed fiction and verse was important for Beat poets. Kenneth Ford’s 1959 collection Poetry for Jazz included odes dedicated to Lester Young and Billie Holiday, while Gregory Corso, the youngest member of Kerouac’s circle, used “hipster jargon” to celebrate Charlie Parker in his ode Requiem for Bird. The distinguished poet Ken Nordine, who was 98 when he died in 2019, called his improvised stream-of-consciousness storytelling poetry “word jazz”. “I like jazz for the principle of what jazz is: a flight of musical fantasy within structure,” he said in an interview for the 1994 book Incredibly Strange Music, Vol II. Nordine’s work influenced Tom Waits, another musician who has talked extensively about his admiration for Kerouac’s blend of jazz and poetry.