Ted Joans

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Ted Joans (1928-2003). Courtesy Wikipedia.

Theodore "Ted" Joans (July 4, 1928 - April 25, 2003) was an African-American surrealist jazz poet, trumpeter, and painter.

Life

Joans was born in Cairo, Illinois. His parents worked on the riverboats that plied the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, he played the trumpet and was an avid jazz aficionado, following Bop as it developed, and continued to espouse jazz of all styles and eras throughout his life.

He earned a degree in fine arts from Indiana University, Bloomington.

In New York City he painted in a style he dubbed Jazz Action and read his poetry, developing a personal style of oral delivery called Jazz Poetry. He was a participant in the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village. He was a contemporary and friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others. He shared a room for a time with the great jazz musician Charlie Parker. His bohemian costume balls and rent parties were photographed by Fred McDarrah and Weegee. Joans was also deeply involved in Surrealism, meeting Joseph Cornell; and at first becoming close to his childhood hero Salvador Dalí, then soon breaking with him.

In Paris, he was welcomed into the circle of André Breton. Joans was an erudite africanist and traveled extensively throughout the continent, frequently on foot, over many decades between periods in Europe and North America. From the 1960s onward, Joans had a house in Tanger, Morocco and then in Timbuktu, Mali. While he ceased playing the trumpet he maintained a jazz sensibility in the reading of his poems and frequently collaborated with musicians. He continued to travel and maintained an active correspondence with a host of creative individuals, among them Langston Hughes, Michel Leiris, Aimé Césaire, Robert Creeley, Jayne Cortez, Stokeley Carmichael, Ishmael Reed, Paul Bowles, and Franklin and Penelope Rosemont; many of these letters are collected at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Delaware houses his correspondence with Charles Henri Ford. Joans was also a close correspondent/participant of the Chicago Surrealist Group.

Joans' painting Bird Lives hangs in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He was also the originator of the "Bird Lives" legend and graffiti in New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in March 1955. Joans invented the technique of outagraphy, in which the subject of a photograph is cut out of the image. His visual art work spans collages, assemblage objects, paintings and drawings including many resulting from the collaborative surrealist game Cadavre Exquis. The rhinoceros is a frequent subject in his work in all media. He also created short Super 8 film works.

During the early 1980s Joans was a writer in residence in Berlin, Germany under the auspices of the DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst) program. He was a contributor of Jazz essays and reviews to magazines such as Coda and Jazz Magazine. His autobiographical text "Je Me Vois" appeared in the Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series, Volume 25, published by Gale Research. His work has been included in numerous anthologies.

In the late 1990s Joans relocated to Seattle, Washington, and resided there and in Vancouver, British Columbia, until 2003. He died in Vancouver due to complications from diabetes.

Writing

His work stands at the intersection of several avant-garde streams and some have seen in it a precursor to the orality of the spoken word movement. However he criticized the competitive aspect of slam poetry. Joans is known for his motto: "Jazz is my Religion, and Surrealism is my point of view".

Recognition

Ted Joans was the recipient of the American Book Award Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001, from the Before Columbus Foundation.

Publications

Poetry

• Beat: Jazz poems. New York: Rhino Review, 1959.
• Jazz Poems: Beat funky. New York: Rhino Review, 1959.
• Beat Poems.Deretchin, New York: Deretchin, 1959.
• All of Ted Joans and No More: Beat Generation jazz poems . New York: Excelsior Press, 1961.
• The Truth: A poem 1960. Amsterdam: Surrealistisch Kabinet, 1968.
• For United Cool Kind: Magnificently evolved. Berlin: 1968.
• Black Pow-Wow: Jazz poems. New York: Hill & Wang, 1969.
  • published in UK as A Black Pow-Wow of Jazz Poems. London: Calder & Boyers, 1973.
• Afrodisia: New poems.. New York: Hill & Wang, 1970.
• Black Flower Poems. Amsterdam: Het Amsterdamsch Litterair Café 'De Engelbewaarder', 1972.
• Spetrophilia: Poems, collages. Amsterdam: Het Amsterdamsch Litterair Café 'De Engelbewaarder', 1973.
• Jazz is Our Religion. Nancy, France: Jazz Pulsations : Imprimerie des Celestins, 1973.
• Flying Piranha (with Joyce Mansour), New York: Bola Press, 1978.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose! Poems. Amsterdam: Surreeel Kasteel, 1980.
• Old and New Duck Butter Poems. Paris: Hand Shake Editions, 1980.
• A Few Poems. Lome, Togo: 1981.
• Sure, Really I Is (poems & collages). Sidmouth, Devon, UK: Transformaction, 1982.
• Some Sum of Surrealist Poems. Toronto: Letters, 1987.
• Double Trouble: Poems. Paris: Revue Noire / Editions Bleu Outremer, 1992.
• Okapi Passion. Oakland, CA: Ishmael Reed, 1994.
• Wow: Poems (illustrate by Laura Corsiglia). Muckilteo, WA: Quartermoon Press, 1999.
• Teducation: Selected poems, 1949-1999 (illustrated by Heriberto Cogollo). Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 1999.
• Select One or More: Poems. Berkeley, CA: Bancroft Library Press, 2000.
• Lost and Found: "In Thursday sane". Davis, CA: Swan Scythe Press, 2001.
• Our Thang: Several poems, several drawings. Victoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2001.

Non-fiction

• A Black Manifesto in Jazz Poetry and Prose. London: Calder & Boyars, 1971.

Art

• The Hipsters (collages). New York: Corinth, 1961.
• Jazz Drawings: Ted Joans. New York: New York Jazz Museum, 1977.

.Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Ted Joans & Jimmy Garrison "Jazz Is My Religion" Live Poetry Reading 1967

Poet Ted Jones Performs in Amsterdam

• Jazzpoems (cassette). Düsseldorf & Münich, Germany: S Press Tonbandverlag, 1980.

See also

• The Beat poets
• List of U.S. poets

References

• "Ted Joans: The surrealist Griot" in From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France 1840-1980 by Michel Fabre, 1991, University of Illinois.
• "Ted Joans and the (B)reach of the African American Literary Canon" by Robert Elliot Fox, in MELUS 29:3/4 (Fall/Winter 2004)
• "Ted Joans' surrealist history lesson," by Joanna Pawlik, in International Journal of Francophone Studies 14:1/2 (2011).

External links

Poems

• "I Too, at the Beginning"
• Some Poems from WOW

Prose

• "Bird and the Beats"

Audio / video

• Ted Joans at YouTube

Books

• Ted Joans at Amazon.com

About

• A Spoken Word Original, African American Registry
• Ted Joans 1928-2003, Village Voice obituary by Robin D.G. Kelley
• "Ted Joans, 74, Jazzy Beat Poet Known for 'Bird Lives' Graffiti," New York Times obituary
• Ted Joans Official website.
• Ted Joans Lives! Tribute (huge)
• Jack Foley writes about Ted Joans at Empty Mirror
• Marvelous Life: Tribute to Ted Joans at LauraTed: Ted Joans & Laura Corsiglia Official website.
• Ted Joans at Milk magazine.

Etc.

• Guide to the Ted Joans Papers at The Bancroft Library