The Works of Michael S. Harper

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the works of Michael S. Harper and the way in which Harper sees music as a link between past and present. The writer comments on the way in which Harper continues to use jazz as a basis for his poetry expanding his philosophies, somewhat from the early 1970s to include different themes.

From the Paper:

"In the opening of the poem "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" Harper begins by telling us about the black man's pain. Harper says that he interprets the poem's opening as a declaration that men should not assert manhood. The poem is a declaration of tenderness, and a reminder to the reader of a suffering beyond the personal and historical to the cultural, that there can be no reservations fixed to sensibility, that personality gives power through the synthesis of personal history and the overtones of America in and by contact."

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