Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, was the first important African American Poet in American Literature and the first poet to write of both a black and white audience in a time when efforts were being made to re-establish slavery. He was also "the first African-American poet to garner national critical acclaim"(43). During his short lifetime Dunbar became known as the "poet laureate of African Americans" (Columbus 45).Paul Lawrence Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1872, to two freed slaves. Both of Dunbar's parents, who had been born slaves, had a love for literature. His father Joshua, had escaped slavery, moved to Canada, and returned to fight in the Civil War. It was after the war that he met and married Dunbar's mother, Matilda. Matilda and Joshua had two children before he passed away in 1874, (some sources say they may have been divorced). Dunbar had written his first poem when he was seven years old. It was through his mother Matilda, that Dunbar earned a love for literature, for she would teach her children the art of songs and storytelling (Draper 622). He was an excellent, well-behaved and diligent student, and graduated from high school with honors in 1891. Even though he was the only African American in the school, he was
Writing had a way of relaxing Dunbar "In hours of toil it gives me jest", he wrote. My days are never days of ease;I till my ground and prune my trees. Dunbar skillfully goes back and forth from various dialects, the standard English of a classical poet and the dialect of the turn-of-the century black community in America. It was then that Dunbar met and became friends with James Newton Matthews who wrote to a paper in Illinois admiring Dunbar's work. When ripened gold is all the plain,I put my sickle to the grain. Combined efforts were attempting to re-establish slavery in whatever form they could. His writing however, reveals Dunbar's awareness of the rebellious and social insight often hidden under the guise of simple Black dialect"(Young 123). Dunbar was ill for most of his life and eventually died of tuberculosis February 9, 1906. It was then that he married the African American poet Alice Ruth Moore in March of 1898 after returning from England. He plays both sides of the fence it seems to me. Dunbar's style of writing was like that of none other during his time period, as thought by other poets. Dunbar poetry addressed these times with all of the craftiness of a master. New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees the transcendent truth of a situation, a term derived from a holy saint's appearance to mortals); they "examined" and "clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon it through their "insights" (Columbus 25). As the demand for his poetry grew, Dunbar began to cultivate literary friendships that helped him publish more of his works (Columbus 32, 35). Dunbar has worked hard to accomplish the goals he's set for himself while others lay around and watch life pass them by.
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