LibriVox volunteers bring you 18 recordings of The Voice Of The Banjo by Paul Laurence Dunbar. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for November 3, 2019. ------ What struck me in reading Mr. Dunbar's poetry was what had already struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana, in Kentucky and Illinois. They had felt, as I felt, that however gifted his race had proven itself in music, in oratory, in several of the other arts, here was the first instance of an American negro who had evinced innate distinction in literature. In my criticism of his book ... So far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar was the only man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life aesthetically and express it lyrically. (W. D. HOWELLS from the Introduction to Lyrics of Lowly Life)