
This is Dr. Margaret Walker ( wiki bio poetry selection ). She was born in Alabama in 1915, went to school in New Orleans, and worked as a poet and professor right up until her death in 1998. Her take on Stag was originally published in 1942, when Walker was still a young woman, recently employed by the New Deal's Work Progress Administration and its Federal Writer's Project (alongside Richard Wright). This is a transcription of dialect, and Walker reads it as such in both recordings below. (Both source albums also include recordings of Walker's poem [...]