Lynch Fragments

In the course of her own investigations, Wells-Barnett had spoken with many African American citizens who had run to the woods for safety while Hose was being burned. But even reading “Lynch Fragment 2” in Cortez's 1973 book Scarifications, the author could not know of the poem's relationship to Edwards' sculpture, because there was no mention of it in the book, despite the fact that the book is filled with wonderful and mysterious works by Edwards. The page facing the title page reads “Drawings By Mel Edwards,” and the title page itself bears one of those drawings, as does the book's cover. “Lynch Fragment 2” is accompanied by another of Edwards' drawings, but absent authorial indications of a source in sculpture, it is the drawing that the author found inflected by the poem, rather than the other way around.