Blues and the Poetic Spirit (Roots of Jazz) [Paperback]

Paul Garon (Author)

Book Description

Series: Roots of Jazz | Publication Date: January 1, 2001

While much has been written about the sociological significance of the blues, this is a unique inquiry into the blues and the mind, a study of the blues as thought. Here, the subconscious power of the blues is examined from a poetic and psychological perspective, illuminating the blues’ deepest creative sources and exploring its far-reaching influence and appeal.

Like Surrealist poetry in particular, blues communicate through highly charged symbols of aggression and desire—eros, crime, magic, night, and drugs, among others. A close analysis of classic blues lyrics, along with a wealth of source material from Freud and James Frazer, to Breton and Marcuse, conveys the blues’ major poetic function of spiritual revolt against repression.

First published in 1975, Blues and the Poetic Spirit is a blues literature classic. This long-awaited new edition assesses developments in the blues since that time and outlines the social and political forces that continue to shape its evolution.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paul Garon knows the blues, from the music itself to the poetry and psychology that are the impetus of its creation. The author of biographies of such blues icons as Peetie Wheatstraw and Memphis Minnie, Garon focuses on the social and political elements that have evolved the blues over the last several decades, exploring the blues as a "psychopoetic" contribution to American music and history. Included are rare photographs of blues musicians and the world they inhabit.

Review

Blues is explored from a psychological and literary perspective in a classic title which was out of print for nearly ten years and which now reappears in an updated, enlarged edition. Use this to replace a tattered older copy or to gain fresh insights into the purposes and meaning of blues music. -- Midwest Book Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers; Rev Sub edition (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863158
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863156
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,853,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blues and the Poetic Spirit by Paul Garon, August 17, 2000

By 

Ron Sakolsky (Springfield, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blues and the Poetic Spirit (Roots of Jazz) (Paperback)

Recently, while working on editing a soon to be published Autonomedia anthology under the title "Surrealist Subversion," I had the opportunity to revisit Paul Garon's classic American surrealist volume, "Blues and the Poetic Spirit," now in a second (1996) edition thanks to City Lights Publishers. This latest edition includes a new Introduction by Garon updating and expanding upon his original 1975 blues treatise and an always insightful Afterward by fellow surrealist Franklin Rosemont. As Rosemont puts it in the course of his discussion of the inherently subversive core of the blues, "Notwithstanding the whimpering objections of a few tired skeptics, this revolt cannot be 'assimilated' into the abject mainstream of American bourgeois/Christian culture except by way of dilution and/or outright falsification. The 'dark truth' of Afro American music remains unquestionably 'oppositional'." Lately, a leader in the ever growing call and response chorus of praise for the book has been African American cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelley, author of "Yo' Mama's DisFUNKtional" (Beacon Press), who calls the Garon work, "absolutely the best book on blues music." And in her new volume, "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism" (Pantheon), noted black scholar and activist Angela Davis singles out Garon's tome for favorable mention while freely dissing the bulk of the blues literary canon. These two plaudits must be particularly gratifying to Garon since he has always insisted that the blues must be discussed first and foremost as a black poetry of resistance to racist oppression and Eurocentric notions of white supremacy. As Garon says in his book, "Poetry, kindled by desire, is the light that can dispel the pallor of bourgeois civilization. It does this through its use of 'images', 'convulsive' images, images of the fantastic and the marvelous, images of 'desire'." In exploring the fertile crossroads between art and the politics of desire that has shaped the popular cultural form known as the blues, no other book even comes close.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book from Living Blues co-founder, August 30, 2001

By 

Barry Walton (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blues and the Poetic Spirit (Roots of Jazz) (Paperback)

Essential reading. One of the top five blues books, unique in the field. This is easily the best analysis of blues lyrics, treating black music as black power (beware pale imitations). To say it lacks feeling is to miss the point by a solid mile.

3.0 out of 5 stars A worthy, if awkward and dated, attempt to academicise the blues, September 13, 2009

By 

J. R. Allen (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blues and the Poetic Spirit (Roots of Jazz) (Paperback)

This is an interesting book: a psycho-poetic analysis of the Blues from a Surrealist perspective. The title lured me in, I admit (as did the "City Lights" logo by the bar code). I began reading and was at first quite pleased with my find. The author's main sources are Freud, Artaud, and Peetie Wheatstraw (in no particular order), and he writes with an earnest love for the Blues and the absurd poetic humor in so many Blues lyrics. I would, indeed, call him a blues purist. So much of a purist, in fact, that he becomes a hater. He speaks of "white blues" with disdain (and always in quotations), can't stand "soul" music (also always in quotations), and seems to think that white enthusiasts of the Blues are just as bad as the white musicians who rip it off. His trash-talking of the white man in relation to Blues music is extreme and uncomfortable enough that I'm pretty sure he must be a white guy.

If you skip the chapter "Whites versus Blacks", you ought to be able to skirt most of the uncomfortable race talk and get to the actual meat of the book, which is the phycho-poetic analysis of the Blues from a Surrealist perspective. This part is actually pretty interesting, and fun to read. Garon walks the reader through a number of common psychological themes, gives plenty of brilliant quotes from old Blues songs (and, thankfully, let's them mostly speak for themselves - some signifyin' is best left unexplained), and ties it all up with the Surrealist idea of the poet as a culture-maker/culture-breaker/rebel/trickster type. Overall an enjoyable read, even if its handling of race issues is a little meh...