Jazz Fantasia

“Jazz Fantasia” opens like a Homeric epic, invoking the Jazzmen like how Homer would invoke the Muses: “Sing, Goddess!” is comparable to, “Go to it, O Jazzmen.” Similarly, the poet speaks to the jazzmen and their music, mimicking the style of the ode, which is a poem of praise directed at a person or object. In this sense, Sandburg ascribes epic grandeur to the jazzmen—the kind of grandeur usually reserved for ancient classics or grand artistic subjects. But Sandburg’s poem is about jazz, which at the time of writing was more of an underground, working class, lower form of art just beginning to become popular. This is typical Sandburg: He was a poet who worked to portray everyday images, activities, and symbols in grand poetic ways. Even Smoke and Steel, the book that holds "Jazz Fantasia," is full of poems about the grime of the modern city all depicted in a romantic, poetic way. So, in this sense, the poem falls in line with Sandburg’s main poetic preoccupation, which was to depict ordinary America in exceptional ways.

The entire poem is full of romantic visions of common things. The speaker describes the speakeasy or honky-tonk in stanza three with sentimental similes like “an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-tops” (Line 5), and even the image of bootleggers has romantic prominence: “cry like a racing car slipping away from a / motorcycle cop, bang-bang!” (Lines 6-7) The imagery in this stanza is indicative of the chaos and the beauty of jazz. Sandburg does this with the poetic elements of the lines, including imagery, simile, alliteration, and onomatopoeia.

To drive home the beauty and romanticism of jazz and the culture surrounding it, Sandburg moves the poem in the last stanza to a naturalistic image of the steamboat rising in the Mississippi River. The speaker gives the steamboat the same properties as an instrument making its own music as it moves, and Sandburg connects this music to the heavenly scene above, merging the music with the stars when he says, “and the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars” (Line 11). The connection here makes clear Sandburg’s belief that jazz music transcends the ordinary, suggesting he believes it is almost divine and spiritual.

It is impossible to fully understand these images without understanding the culture of jazz and the early 1920s. While this guide will speak to this more later, it is important to understand the connections between jazz music, class, and race. While the origins of jazz are complicated, it evolved from African American music in the 19th century. During the Prohibition era, many white musicians appropriated jazz, and as a result, the legacy of jazz’s relationship to the African American community has become complicated.

Sandburg spent a lot of time traveling across the Midwest and south, so he would have been familiar with both white and Black jazz. Additionally, living in Chicago would have exposed him to some of the more popular jazz acts of the day, and he would have been familiar with the speakeasies and honky-tonks of the Prohibition era. Finally, because of his experience covering the African American community during the race riots in 1919, Sandburg was rare among the white community of that time in his ability to speak to issues and culture among Black Americans.

The poem suggests some of the racial tensions and experiences that informed the evolution of jazz. The biggest connection comes in the last stanza when the image of the jazz club moves to the image of the steamboat pushing up the Mississippi river and bringing the music with it. The Mississippi River is an important symbol for jazz, as the genre began in New Orleans, which lies along the river, and was spread to other cities along the river before branching out into other parts of the nation. That the steamboat (an image of progress and industrialization) takes the music with it upriver is significant, and that Sandburg writes from Chicago, which is in the north, is also significant. In this sense, the poem merges the old African American New Orleans jazz tradition with the 1920s Chicago hot jazz scene. It is further worth noting that the poem, like much of Sandburg’s work, “give[s] no suggestion of his recognition of the massive social injustice through which generations of Negroes had lived and were living” (Sutton, William A. “Personal Liberty Across Wide Horizons: Sandburg and the Negro.” Negro American Literature Forum, vol. 2, no. 2, summer 1968, pp. 19-21.).

While the poem does not make any explicit comment on race, it is certainly celebratory in its tone and presentation of jazz music and culture. The speaker celebrates the imagery of street performers using makeshift instruments with vivid and active verbs and adjectives like sling, ooze, happy, and slippery. All the adjectives and verbs work to give the scene a jovial, energetic tone. The speaker even describes the image of the bootlegger running from the cops in a lively way -- everything bleeds with energy, just like jazz.

Like the presentation of a racial art form, “Jazz Fantasia” also presents imagery of lower class, backstreet culture in a romantic way. Just as the speaker presents the street musicians with life and energy, the speakeasy or honky-tonk has movement and positive vibes. Even the brawl that breaks out between the two men at the top of the staircase is given style with slick alliteration, assonance, and consonance: “[...] stairway and / scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch tumbling down the stairs” (Lines 8-9). The break right after this scene—“Can the rough stuff” (Line 10)—uses slang that adds even more style and youthful energy to the scene before transitioning to the reflective, peaceful nature imagery concluding the poem. The use of this stylistic common language along with the Whitmanian long lines makes this a poem for everyday people. It celebrates the normal, everyday experiences of working-class Americans instead of adopting a traditional, highbrow poetic voice. It’s a progressive poem not concerned with tradition or the old ways of doing things.