How did Jack Kerouac use blues and jazz in Mexico City Blues?

In Mexico City Blues (1959), Jack Kerouac experimented with the idioms of blues and jazz by structuring the work as a sequential poem comprising 242 choruses.1

This approach reflects his broader literary style, which was heavily influenced by bebop jazz artists such as Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. By adopting the "chorus" structure, Kerouac sought to translate the improvisational nature of jazz into poetry, mirroring the rhythmic and spontaneous qualities of the music he admired. This technique was part of his ongoing development of "spontaneous bop prosody," a method intended to capture the immediacy and energy of musical performance within written language.21