Orrick Johns

Born in St. Louis on June 2, 1887, Orrick Glenday Johns was an American poet and playwright who became known as one of the early modernist voices in free verse. He was active in the Greenwich Village literary world in the 1910s and was also associated with the Grantwood, New Jersey, artist colony linked to Others: A Magazine of the New Verse.

Johns first gained wide attention for the poem Second Avenue, and he went on to publish books including Asphalt and Other Poems and Black Branches. Alongside poetry, he wrote plays and later published the memoir Time of Our Lives: The Story of My Father and Myself, showing the range of his interests beyond verse alone.

He died on July 8, 1946. While he is not as widely read today as some of his contemporaries, he remains an interesting figure in early 20th-century American literature for readers curious about the experimental energy of that period.