Jazz Fantasia

“Jazz Fantasia” opens like a Homeric epic, invoking the Jazzmen like how Homer would invoke the Muses: “Sing, Goddess!” is comparable to, “Go to it, O Jazzmen.” Similarly, the poet speaks to the jazzmen and their music, mimicking the style of the ode, which is a poem of praise directed at a person or object. In this sense, Sandburg ascribes epic grandeur to the jazzmen—the kind of grandeur usually reserved for ancient classics or grand artistic subjects. But Sandburg’s poem is about jazz, which at the time of writing was more of an underground, working class, lower form of art just beginning to become popular. This is typical Sandburg: He was a poet who worked to portray everyday images, activities, and symbols in grand poetic ways. Even Smoke and Steel, the book that holds "Jazz Fantasia," is full of poems about the grime of the modern city all depicted in a romantic, poetic way. So, in this sense, the poem falls in line with Sandburg’s main poetic preoccupation, which was to depict ordinary America in exceptional ways.

The entire poem is full of romantic visions of common things.