Black Chicago poet Fenton Johnson published these two free-verse poetic portraits in Others magazine in 1919, gaining him some notice as an Afro-American who was working in the avant-garde forms of Modernism.
I performed his two poems with a rock band accompaniment for today's example of what the Parlando Project does: combining various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in different styles. We've been featuring work of this lesser-known, but pioneering, poet Fenton Johnson this month; and you find out more about him and check out our over 700 other audio pieces at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org