Not to put the curse on things that fate might cast whenever you make plans, but I have a plan for February. I’ve been reading a bunch of Chicago-based early 20^th century Afro-American poet Fenton Johnson’s poems this winter. Long time readers here may recall that I did a series on Johnson’s poetry in 2018, still early in this Project’s life.

Johnson is a bridge between Paul Laurence Dunbar, who died young after becoming the first Afro-American poet to pick up much notice, and the early poets of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes who more fully brought Black American poetry into greater recognition.

One of Johnson’s poems, “Tired,”  is still included in some anthologies of Black poets, perhaps because pioneering Afro-American poetry anthologist James Weldon Johnson (no relation) included it. In my 2018 series I tried to outline my estimate of how Johnson came to write such a despairing poem and to explore other modes of his verse. Since then more information on Johnson’s early years has become available to me, and I have a more complicated theory of his poetic progress that includes more data points.

I hesitate to lead off with “Tired” to represent him, though it’s a fine poem which James Weldon Johnson selected bringing notice to Fenton Johnson. See this post to see what James Weldon Johnson wrote about it.

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One thing that attracts me to Fenton Johnson is that he (like Langston Hughes) wrote using his experience of Afro-American musical idioms. Regardless of current panics and nonsense expressed around the issue, Black history is American History—and oh my, is Black music American music!   To keep’em separated would be so damaging to America’s culture. Oddly, believing that misapprehensions and ignorance must be behind such a self-defeating and self-denying idea, I continue to go forward trying to defeat that in my small way, despite realizing that there is much I don’t know and can’t portray as well as it might be portrayed.

Writing on and performing Fenton Johnson is a case in point. He seems to have too few considering him right now or bringing his story forward. I’d rather do the best I can illuminating his work with what skills and time I have, than to shrink from this out of deference or modesty.

Since today was Langston Hughes’ birthday, I’ll precede my Fenton Johnson February series with this piece of his that I performed previously for this Project. Hughes’ “Lenox Avenue: Midnight”  is a beautiful expression of that complex thing: Black Joy. I was audacious enough to add a couplet at the end of Hughes’ poem/text that was my reaction to what Hughes portrayed in his poem, which is just about as presumptuous as my attempt to compose and play something that sounds like Jazz. You can hear my musical performance with the audio player below — or if no player, with this highlighted link.

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