Digital Object Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.2
Jazz influence on “Beat Generation” has been a major point of discussion among many academic scholars. The studies that have been done on Beat Generation till now throw light on how Beat Generation admires Jazz, mentions them in their poem and even performs with jazz accompanists. The way Beat Generation admires Jazz music is quite an interesting element about Beat Generation. This paper aims to extend these observations to identify exact techniques that were adopted by Beat Generation and to do so, the present paper evaluates specific formal techniques that are inherited from Jazz music. All those formal Jazz principles were turned into foundational structure of Beat Poetry. Through in-depth analysis of six Beat poems: Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," "A Supermarket in California," and "America", Gary Snyder's "Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout", Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity", Gregory Corso's "Marriage", and Bob Kaufman's "Walking Parker Home", this paper aims to navigate through formal jazz principles adopted in Beat Poetry, such as bepop’s syncopation, call-and-response structures. The paper argues that Beat Poets were diligent formalists who rigorously studied Jazz and adopted it systematically through techniques such as anaphoric repetition, breath-based lineation, practised improvisation. In doing so, Beat Poets established Orality, Performance and Voice as fundamental structural feature of poetry instead of additional ornamental dimension of poetry.
Sagathiya, Priyanka, and Sanjay Lalani. “Jazz, Rhythm and Orality in Beat Poetry.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2026, pp. 13-24, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.2.
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by the Research Centre for English Language and Literature (RCELL) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
← Back to Vol. 17, Issue 5 · Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · the-criterion.com