Jazz Fantasia

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Simile and Personification

“Jazz Fantasia” uses three similes to express the power of the music. The third stanza opens with these similes in succession:

“Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-tops, / moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a / racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!” (Lines 5-7)

The use of similes to describe music makes sense. Since sounds only sound like sounds, a poet is smart to use figurative language to describe the emotion associated with sounds. The three similes affectively add an expressive element to the sounds, like the emotional feelings music can inspire. The speaker calls for the kind of sound that feels like a lonesome wind, distant and on high. Then the speaker calls for the kind of sound that feels like longing—a kind of soft, desperate sound. Finally, the speaker calls for a loud cry like ecstasy and freedom, like a car making a dramatic turn to evade the authorities. Then “bang-bang!” (Line 7) of the police guns comes through the air, powerful like the banging of drums signaling a downbeat.

These similes imbue the words with an extra musical quality, providing the reader with a deeper understanding of the feelings associated with the music the speaker hears. In this way, the reader may empathize with the poem’s speaker by better understanding a sense of their emotional state.

Similarly, Sandburg uses personification to add another dimension of power to the music. Personification adds agency, depth, and power to non-human objects. He personifies the instruments, saying they moan, cry, and ooze—human characteristics. This personification of the instruments signifies the speaker’s respect for the music and awe at the instruments’ ability to produce such emotion that would cause a person to write a poem about the whole thing.

Onomatopoeia

Since “Jazz Fantasia” is a poem about sound, it makes sense for the poem to rely on onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is the use of a word to stand for a sound; thus, this poetic convention is the most natural way to describe the sounds of instruments. Sandburg begins the poem with a clever example of this, saying “Drum on your drums” (Line 1). The word drum is a noun, a verb, and onomatopoeia because a sound the drum makes is drum.

In the second stanza, the sandpaper goes “hushahusha-hush” (Line 4), mimicking the sound made by the actual sandpaper. Sandburg adds the adjective “slippery” (Line 4) before “sand-paper” to add a descriptive effect, strengthening the presentation of the sound and leaving it concrete and not open to interpretation.

In the third stanza, the policemen’s guns go “bang-bang” (Line 7), a childish depiction of the sound of gunfire or of a motorcycle exhaust, but one that feels at home here—especially if the reader is a bit removed from the scene. At the same time, a description of drums follows the bang-bang, relating the crashing of guns to the sound of distant gunfire.

Finally, the last stanza describes the steamboat with “hoo-hoo-hoo-oo” (Line 11). The steamboat sounds like an owl’s hoot, connecting it with the natural imagery surrounding it.

The effect of all these sounds is that the poem becomes more musical. For a poem about music, this is important.

Alliteration

The poem makes heavy use of alliteration: the repeated use of letters or sounds in closely adjacent words. Alliteration gives the poem a musical quality, and since the poem is unrhymed free verse—it lacks formal rhyme or meter—the repetition adds rhythm to the lines.

The first stanza uses alliteration of the letters d, b, and s, respectively, between the instruments and their actions: “Drum on your drums,” “batter on your banjoes,” “sob on the … / saxophones” (Lines 1-2).

The second stanza alliterates s and t sounds with words like sling, slippery, sand, and tin and trombones.

The third stanza alliterates s, t, and c sounds, continuing the pattern of the second stanza but adding a third letter to the mix.

The final stanza continues the alliteration of s, t, and c, but it also adds r near the end of the poem.

The way the poem makes use of alliteration in this manner of building and adding more letters to the convention mimics the manner the poem flows and is structured. One may, once again, also equate this use of alliterative language to the way jazz music sounds.