Audiobooks by Fenton Johnson

Born in the USA - Exploring America in Poems - The Great Lakes Poets

"Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us. Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy. In the volumes of this series we take a look through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades. The United States may be many things: the world's policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy. Little wonder that's its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art. Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up. In this volume we have collected verse from poets born around the Great Lakes. These huge bodies of water are really inland seas and the poetic beauty created on their shores by poets such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Ambrose Bierce, Vachel Lindsay, James Whitcomb Riley, and Alice Carey humble and inspire us all in ways that only a poet's words can."

Alice Cary, Ambrose Bierce, Clara Ann Thompson, Fenton Johnson, James Madison Bell, James Riley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Vachel Lindsay (Author), Darrell Joe, John-Michael Macdonald, Laurel Lefkow (Narrator)

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Minor Notes, Volume 1

"The first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. Smith A Penguin Classic Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous. The poets featured in Volume 1 are George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimké."

Fenton Johnson, George Moses Horton, Georgia Douglas Johnson (Author), Jesse Mccarthy, Joshua Bennett, Tracy K. Smith (Narrator)

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Selected poems of Fenton Johnson

"Fenton was born on May 7th' 1888 in the American state of Chicago. He represented the Harlem Renaissance writers in the early 20th century, and self-published three poetry collections: A Little Dreaming in 1913, Visions of the Dusk in 1915, and Songs of the Soil in 1916. Having made quite a name as a poet, essayist, author, editor and educator, he expired in 1958."

Fenton Johnson (Author), Tarun Ratnani (Narrator)

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At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life

"A profound meditation on accepting and celebrating one's solitude. Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic 'solitaries' he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickinson in Amherst, to Bill Cunningham photographing the streets of New York, from Cézanne (married, but solitary nonetheless) painting Mt. St. Victoire over and over again, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. Each character portrait is full of intense detail, the bright wakes they've left behind illuminating Fenton Johnson's own journey from his childhood in the backwoods of Kentucky to his travels alone throughout the world and the people he has lost and found along the way."

Fenton Johnson (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)

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