As a sort of “hybrid poet”, Gwendolyn Brooks’ work in the mid 1940s took the length of the bebop-influenced free verse and the rhymes of blues to create a jazz poem entirely her own. Contextually, a poem of hers such as “a song in the front yard” can be seen to serve as a precursor to “We Real Cool,” a poem she would write years later. Brooks is one of the best examples to begin my detailing my findings in cool jazz and modal jazz in relation to poems. In “We Real Cool,” Brooks’ line radically changes from the work she had done in the mid 1940s. “We Real Cool”, published in 1959, employs a brief line and enjambment to create a staccato-like music to the lines. The jazz of Brooks’ “We Real Cool” occurs after the line break-- the phrasings; two monosyllabic words exhibiting consonance or assonance. What’s achieved in these moments is a mirroring of a feature that can be found in the beginning moments of Miles Davis’ “So What”, or Art Blakey’s “Moanin”— the plagal cadence, known in jazz as the “amen cadence”. This cadence, usually utilized in the opening and closing themes of the cool/modal jazz song is a chord progression where the subdominant chord is followed by its tonal chord; in American English, think of the vowel sounds of “o” in dollar and “u” in dumb” and put them together; “DAH-duh”. Take for instance, “Jazz June,” the “az” unrounded vowel sound leading to the rounded “ü”. Each phrasing requires a shift of roundness of the lips, in accordance to the vowel sound; the mouth opens with “Jazz”, & closes with “June.” Exploring this parallel helped me understand how chords affected poetic line, and, consequently, how I could write about music in my own work; each break should serve the jazz of the language, this is something a poet like Komunyakaa knows, something a poet like Jericho Brown can't help but know-- you notice, after their breaks, the door opens wider on the possibilities of their entire line, both in music and meaning.