"He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note,
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.
He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays.
But ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue."

Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote this poem, "The Poet," three years before his death in 1906 at the age of 33. Its words may express his own regrets about the direction of his literary career. Dunbar was the most famous African American poet, and one of the most famous American poets, of his time.


His career brought him international fame and by any measure was a tremendous success. Although Dunbar felt his best work was his poetry in standard English, he was celebrated almost exclusively for his folk poetry about African Americans written in dialect the "jingle in a broken tongue." His identification with dialect poetry disappointed him during his lifetime and alienated some later African American readers. But Dunbar's poetry has also been praised by readers, from W. E. B. Du Bois to Nikki Giovanni, who recognized the challenges Dunbar faced as a turn-of-the-century black poet trying to sound the "deeper note."


Dunbar's parents had both been slaves on plantations in Kentucky. Although Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio, during Reconstruction, his parents' stories about life as as slaves were the basis for some of his folk poetry. He attended Dayton public schools and was the only student of color at Dayton High School, where he was class president, editor of the school paper, president of the literary society, and class poet.


After graduating in 1891 Dunbar tried to pursue a career in journalism. He could not find a writing job because of his race, and he became an elevator operator. However, he continued writing, earning the nickname "the elevator boy poet."


Dunbar took out a loan to publish his first book, "Oak and Ivy", in 1893. Later that year, he read his poetry at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where he was praised by Frederick Douglass and other prominent African Americans.


Dunbar became a crossover literary sensation in 1896, when his second book, "Majors and Minors", was noticed by well-known white critic and writer William Dean Howells. Howells arranged for an expanded version of the book, titled "Lyrics of Lowly Life", to be published by the mainstream white firm of Dodd, Mead. The national publication, and the speaking tour that followed, made Dunbar famous among black and white audiences. His reputation soon spread overseas.


Howells was also among the first critics to reserve his praise for Dunbar's dialect poetry, and from that point poems and short stories in dialect became the basis for most of Dunbar's popularity. Although a handful of other African Americans had published works in dialect before Dunbar, most of his direct literary inspiration in that genre seemed to come from white authors in the sentimental "plantation tradition" of American literature.


This literature, which was extremely popular in the decades following the Civil War (1861-1865), was often written by Southerners who romanticized black slaves and scenes of plantation life. Dunbar used dialect that resembled the words of these authors more closely than it resembled actual African American speech. His poems tended to portray the folk simplicity of slaves' lives rather than the injustice and oppression of slavery itself (see Slavery in the United States).


Dunbar's dialect poetry is often about courtship, folk traditions, and other benign aspects of the slave experience. Its neutral tone on slavery added to its popularity with white audiences but was often criticized by black readers. "When De Co’n Pone's Hot," for example, is a nostalgic tribute to slave cooking. Its narrator clearly states that any troubles slaves had were instantly erased by the good feeling experienced when dinnertime came: "[G]loom tu'ns into gladness ... joy drives out de doubt/When de oven do' is opened,/An' de smell comes po'in out."


In some of his dialect poetry, however, Dunbar does include an awareness and irony missing from white plantation literature. In "An Ante-Bellum Sermon," for example, he quotes a slave preacher's speech, a familiar topic for parody. But within this sermon, the preacher's message is about Moses delivering his people from slavery, and the wrath God then brought to bear on the slaveholders. And the preacher makes very plain that even though his text is ostensibly "judgin' Bible people by deir ac's," it has a special relevance to his audience:

"So you see de Lawd's intention,
Evah sence de worl' began,
Was dat His almighty freedom
Should belong to evah man."

Dunbar's poetry in standard English takes his feelings on race even further. Poems such as "Douglass," "The Colored Soldiers," and "Black Sampson at Brandywine" are specific tributes to black individuals. And several of his best-known poems appear to speak powerfully about race without ever saying the word.


In "Sympathy," for example, Dunbar creates the powerful image of empathy with the caged bird who still sings an image that poet Maya Angelou recalled in the title of her autobiography. And in "We Wear the Mask" which begins with the line "We wear the mask that grins and lies" he speaks of the need to present a contented face to the world to mask the deep pain and anger within. Many readers see this poem as Dunbar's explanation for the minstrel role he himself played by writing dialect poems that pandered to white audiences (see Minstrelsy).


Dodd, Mead published four volumes of Dunbar's poetry during his lifetime, and although his audiences always favored his dialect poetry and short stories, Dunbar also wrote standard poetry, four novels, and several essays.


In 1895 he began to correspond with another black poet whose work he admired, Alice Moore. The correspondence led to marriage in 1898, and although the marriage ended amicably just four years later, while it lasted Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson were a celebrated literary couple.


Dunbar's literary fame, great as it was, came to a premature end. Near the beginning of his marriage, Dunbar contracted tuberculosis and eventually developed a dependency on the alcohol prescribed as a painkiller. Within a few years, he was limited by both the disease and the alcoholism.


In the last several decades of the 20th century, scholars and readers started again to consider Dunbar's life and work. He remains a key figure in the African American literary tradition not only because he was one of the first black authors to create a sensation on the mainstream American literary scene but also because his writing, even in dialect, contains powerful nuances that still move readers.


See the Library of Black America for Dunbar's novels The Fanatics and The Sport of the Gods, along with his Complete Poems and Short Stories.

"Dunbar, Paul Laurence." Microsoft® Encarta® Africana Third Edition. © 1998-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved