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Paul Laurence Dunbar Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of two former slaves, absorbed his mothers wisdom and stories told by his father. As one of the last of a generation to interact with actual slaves, he was able to use his fathers story telling spirit and mothers wisdom to depict the life experiences of African Americans. Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872 to Joshua Dunbar and Matilda Murphy Dunbar in Dayton, Ohio. He was taught to read wisdom. He also took in the stories told by his father, Joshua Dunbar, who escaped from enslavement in Kentucky and served in the Massachusetts 55 th Regiment during the Civil War. Paul Laurence Dunbar was never enslaved, he was one of the last of a generation to have ongoing contact with those had been.
Dunbar was steeped in the oral tradition during his formative years and he would go on to become a powerful interpreter of the African American folk experience in literature and song. The only African American in his Dayton, Ohio Central High School class, young Paul already showed literacy talent. He was named class poet, president of the literacy society, and editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. Although he couldnt afford to continue his education after high school, within two years after graduating he had some his poems published of the Dayton Herald.
Soon after, Wilbur Wright (one of the two first-flight brothers) financed Dunbar's founding of the Dayton Tattler, which Dunbar also edited. When Tattler folded, Dunbar sought jobs with local newspapers, but not one was willing to hire an African American, regardless of his talent. With Jones 2 that avenue closed to him, he got work as a hotel elevator operator, which allowed him time for writing. (Strickland, 95) In 1892, one of Dunbar's former teachers asked him to address the Western Association of Writers in Dayton. At the meeting, Dunbar was introduced James Newton Matthew, who was to become another of his champions. For starters, Matthews wrote to an Illinois newspaper singing Dunbar's praises, and Matthews letter was widely reprinted in other newspapers across the land. One of the people who read of Dunbar was poet James Whitcomb Riley.
Intrigued, Riley read numerous poems by Dunbar, and he, too, started singing the young poets praises. Henry A. Toby helped his distribute Oak and Ivy and sent him money from time to time. Toby and Thatcher then collaborated in helping Dunbar to publish in 1895. The Majors were complex poems written in standard English, and the Minors were dialect poems.
The standard English poems absorbed most of his attention during his years. (Strickland, 96) On Dunbar's twenty-forth birthday, he received an unexpected gift: The prestigious journal Harpers Weekly published an essay by novelist and celebrated literary critic. William Dean Howells, praising Dunbar's poetry. At the time, Dunbar was till working as an elevator operator in a hotel in Dayton, Ohio. Afterward, Dunbar was widely recognized as the first important African-American poet, and according to Mabel Smythe (1976, p. 48), he had a greater impact than any other African-American writer of his time. More than two decades later, James Weldon Johnson called him the first true African-American master of writing and recognized him as the first to earn and keep high honors for what he wrote (1922, p. 34). Some African American critics saw a concession to racism evident in Dunbar's black dialect poetry, and while it is unlikely that any perceived concession was intentional, it can Jones 3 certainly be argued that dialect poems like "Parted" and "Corn Song" were more derivative of the plantation school than they were original productions of African American genius.
Yet, during his lifetime, Dunbar's work was praised by Frederick Douglass, Booker T Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others. Negative treatment of Dunbar's poetry by black critics including scholar-poet James Weldon Johnson did not surface fully until the New Negro movement of the 1920 s.
On the other hand, poets County Cullen and Langston Hughes publicly admired and emulated Dunbar. A considered reading of poems like "We Wear the Mask, "When Malindy Sings, "Frederick Douglass, "The Colored Soldiers, " or "The Haunted Oak" affirms Dunbar's loyalty to the black race and his pride in its achievements, as well as his righteous anger over racial injustice. (Braxton) In the spring of 1899, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and fled to the mountains to rest and recuperate. In the early 1900 s, Dunbar published his collection of tales The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories (1900) and three more novels. After the publication of his fourth novel, The Sport of the Gods (1902), his respiratory problems (including a bout of pneumonia) worsened, and Dunbar exacerbated his health problems by abusing alcohol.
That year, he and his wife Alice separated. The following year, Dunbar suffered a nervous breakdown, followed by yet another attack of pneumonia. Despite being so ill he could barely walk, Dunbar managed to continue writing, published Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903), When Malindy Sings (1903), Lil Gal (1904), Howdy, Honey, Howdy (1905), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905), one after another. Ultimately, however, tuberculosis was the death of him, at just 33 years of age. (Strickland, 97) Jones 4 In The Haunted Oak, Paul Laurence Dunbar attacks lynching and allows the tree to speak. The content of the poem is a story told to Dunbar by an old Negro of Howard Town whose nephew had been falsely accused of rape.
Theyd charged him with, the old, old crime, said Howard Town. The Alabama mob had dragged him out of prison and hanged him from the branch of an oak tree. The branch had withered instantly, while other trees continued to flourish. He even goes so far as to name the guilty parties who are the local judge, doctor and pastor: Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black, And the doctor one of white, And the minister, with his oldest son, Was curiously bedight. During the times that the poem was written, it required a great deal of courage. Mayor Brand Whitlock, a white Progressive and patron from Toledo, Ohio, criticized the poets usage of the word innocence in the verse: From those who ride fast on our heels With mind to do him wrong: They have no care for his innocence, And the rope they bear is long.
Even uglier than lynching is that fact that in a number of instances the black victim was hanged merely because of the color of his skin. (Hudson) In Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, We Wear the Mask, he appears to have spoken from the heart. We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, - With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. The we of the poem is the black race collectively or Dunbar himself lifting the mask from his danced language to speak for just a moment of the double nature of the black Jones 5 experience. In life, the mask covers the face and eyes, and the torn and bleeding hearts the myriad subtleties that are mouthed are deliberately indirect and misleading; the speak of this poem steps out from behind the mask.
Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all out tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. In the third verse, the race cries and even sings out to Christ in pain, but the world dream (s) otherwise, unaware of the black mans struggle for equality in the world and for peace within. (Braxton, 1993) One of the most popular of Dunbar's dialect poems was and is "When Malindy Sings, " which builds upon the natural ability of the race in song and is acknowledged to be Dunbar's tribute to his mothers spontaneous outbursts of singing as she worked in the kitchen. The message of the poem is one of praise for simplicity of spirit and the love of God, but the reader is jolted into a humorous view of the situation as he comes to stanza six.
Dunbar's ability to check excessive sentiment is well demonstrated in this poem. Dunbar's dialect poetry is rich in drama, irony, understatement, hyperbole, and caricature. The dual voice of Dunbar's poems is a natural result of the double vision that Dunbar inherited as a black and an American and that threatened to tear him apart. His creation of a double voice in his poetry allowed him to speak to two distinct audiences at once. In fact, Dunbar's use of caricature often renders whites more comic than blacks. In "When Malindy Sings, " a poem written as a tribute to Dunbar's mother, Matilda, the dialect narrator addresses Miss Lucy.
Jones 6 G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy Put dat music book away; What's de use to keep on tryin'? Ef you practise tell you " re gray... You ain't got de nickel o'gans Fu' to make de soun' come right, You ain't got de tu " ns an' twisting's Fu' to make it sweet an' light... Easy 'north fu' folk to holland, Lookin' at de lines an' dots, When dey ain't no one kin sence it, An' de change comes in, in spots.
Dunbar here "signifies" on the whites' assumption of biological and intellectual superiority as well as their ability to read books and music. With all these supposed assets, Miss Lucy can't sing "right"; no amount of practice will render her singing "sweet...
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