Poetic Moments: The Banjo Player by Fenton Johnson

The Banjo Player 

by Fenton Johnson

 

There is music in me, the music of a peasant people.
I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing my songs of
   the cabin and the field. At the Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome
   as the violets in March; there is always food and drink for me there,
   and the dimes of those who love honest music. Behind the railroad
   tracks the little children clap their hands and love me as they love Kris
   Kringle.

But I fear that I am a failure. Last night a woman called me a
   troubadour. What is a troubadour?

Fenton Johnson was an African American poet and writer during the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 7, 1888. Johnson was a heavily anthologized poet, as well as a playwright and member of the Work Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project, during the Great Depression. He died on September 17, 1958.

* This poem is found in the public domain.