Imagine

the Jazz Age!

It was a world recovering from the Great War,
an age of shifting populations and attitudes.

It was the time of
the Great Migration,
the Harlem Renaissance,
of Prohibition, and Suffrage.

Edna Saint Vincent Millay

Edna Saint Vincent Millay

• 1892-1950
• wrote in classical style (i.e. quatrains, couplets, etc.)
• themes were modern
• raised (single mom, Rockland, ME), education (Vassar, scholarship)

"First Fig" (1920)

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

• 1902-1967 (absent parents, cold grandmother, warm neighbors, Midwest)
• Themes: modern (African American life, criticism re exposure)
• Style: modern (free verse, use of language, imagery, rhythm was jazz-like)
• Earned his living as poet (!)

from "Mother to Son" (1922)
... I's still climbin'...
... Life for me
aint been no crystal stair.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• 1896-1940 (St. Paul, Minnesota)
• coined the term "Jazz Age" (Benet's)
• novelist, short story writer, early work in Hollywood
• 1920 married Zelda Sayre (This Side of Paradise)

Oheka

Oheka

Otto Kahn

Kahn was a pre-WWI Jewish refugee from Germany.
He became a banker and a serious patron of the arts (Board President of the Metropolitan Opera, etc).

And fleeting (like a butterfly), the Jazz Age died with the Market crash in 1929.

Like the Jazz Age:
My candle burns at my both ends./It will not last the night./But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends,/it gives a lovely light. (Millay)

The Jazz Age