Jazz poetry

Jazz poetry is poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation" or poetry that takes jazz music, musicians, or the jazz milieu as its subject, and is designed to be performed. Some critics consider it a distinct genre though others consider the term to be merely descriptive.

Jazz poetry has long been something of an "outsider" art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat Generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams.