Explain how the history of jazz inform poems like the ones we read in The 100 Best African American Poems anthology?

DIRECTIONS FOR ESSAY #2: This week, you will conclude your reading of The 100 Best African American Poems. You will also watch “The Truly Remarkable Life of Tupac Shakur” (documentary) and “Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis’ Interview on ‘Jazz’” (Charlie Rose show). For Essay #2, I invite you to consider how poetry and music intersect. You might consider: (1) How does the history of jazz inform poems like the ones we read in The 100 Best African American Poems anthology? Which musicians do you feel perform their songs in a similar fashion as poets write their poems? (2) What can we learn from the cultural context of the Harlem Renaissance about race, identity, and art that helps us better understand the poems in our anthology? What can those like Langston Hughes teach us not only about poetry, but also about this cultural moment in our nation’s tense history with race? (3) How do contemporary artists like Tupac Shakur, Wynton Marsalis, and others speak to the themes presented in our anthology? What kind of music exists today that has been shaped and influenced by such predecessors, particularly in genres such as rap, hip-hop, and R&B? (4) Consider how the corresponding cd tracks of our anthology “give voice to” the poems in this anthology? How does “hearing” these poems impact our understanding of them? What kind of musicality exists in these tracks? I encourage you to focus your attention on ONE of these questions, OR you may devise your own question to direct your essay. Then, make sure you thoroughly use and quote from at least one of the documentaries, as well as from two or three poems from our anthology.
LENGTH: 3-4 pages, typed, double-spaced, MLA formatting and citation required

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