AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

Intimate intercessions in the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar.

African American Review

| June 22, 2007 | Gabbin, Joanne | COPYRIGHT 1999 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

... Then Br'er Adams, a white-haired patriarch, knelt and "took up the cross." --"Anner 'Lizer's Stumblin' Block" (Dunbar, Best Stories)

Much of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar reveals the intimate intercessions of a tormented poet, figuratively "taking up the cross." Dunbar's meteoric rise as the most famous black writer in the world at the end of the nineteenth century, his prolific offerings over a short 14-year career (1892-1906), his ambivalence about the branding of his own poetic genius, his precarious stardom in a society that insisted on "separate-but-equal" race relations, and his tragic, unfulfilled personal life represent the subject matter of many intimate intercessions with which the poet wrestled emotionally and spiritually.

Named for the Apostle Paul, the Biblical figure who helped to establish the Christian church, Dunbar took seriously his parents' charge to be a great man who would carry the word to his people. Like Paul, Dunbar suffered as the chosen expounder of his own gospel, the African American literary tradition. Though he experimented with many literary traditions and read extensively the works of Tennyson, Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, and Poe, among others, he was painfully aware that his own work inspired a debate on the merits of his standard English works as opposed to his more popular dialect pieces that appeared to some too close to the minstrel and plantation traditions. Sterling Brown, in his book Negro Poetry and Drama (1937), considered Dunbar a highly gifted man who "took up the Negro peasant as a clown, and made him a likeable person." Brown recognized that Dunbar benefited from a heritage of folk sense that poured out in "flashes of unforced gay humor," "well-turned folk phrases," and "virtuoso rhythms." However, Brown believed that Dunbar was too strongly influenced by the local color poetry of Irwin Russell and the plantation formula of Thomas Nelson Page, and consequently compromised his interpretation of folk life by omitting mention of the hardships that were undoubtedly a part of it. On the other side of the debate, according to Herbert Woodward Martin and Ronald Primeau in the…

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Dunbar lives!(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Alexander, Elizabeth June 22, 2007 700+ words
...And I have also discovered how Dunbar matters to me. Several years...would occasionally recite Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Party." He did so...teachers in the 1920s at Paul Laurence Dunbar high school in Washington, DC...
Dunbar, the originator.(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Braxton, Joanne M. June 22, 2007 700+ words
...was born in the bed with Paul Laurence Dunbar, born in the bed, as they say...their love of and loyalty to Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry and my mother recited...of The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and began a project of reclamation...
"I know why the caged bird sings!": Dunbar in China.(Paul Laurence Dunbar's...
Magazine article from: African American Review Li, Xilao June 22, 2007 700+ words
Paul Laurence Dunbar used his poetry to express frustration...account of the Chinese response to Paul Laurence Dunbar since the early 1920s. The presence...American literature. Roughly speaking, Dunbar's presence in China can be divided...
Picturing Dunbar's lyrics.(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Sapirstein, Ray June 22, 2007 700+ words
...shortly after his death in 1906, Paul Laurence Dunbar published six books of poetry in...emphasis. (1) Comprising half Dunbar's output of published poetry...illustrated editions demonstrate Dunbar's substantial interaction with...
Second-generation realist; or, Dunbar the naturalist.(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Jarrett, Gene Andrew June 22, 2007 700+ words
...From February to August 1897, Paul Laurence Dunbar lectured and recited poems across...among the hills of Somerset," Dunbar began to write his first novel...442). While writing the novel, Dunbar penned a letter to his fiancee...
"Purple haze": Dunbar's lyric legacy.(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Nielsen, Aldon Lynn June 22, 2007 700+ words
...measure of our songs is our desires" --Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Prometheus" 1. 30 "Dunbar" was a name that had a certain gravitational...me when I later learned that he was the same Dunbar in whose memory DC's Dunbar High School had...
Dunbar and the science of lynching.(Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Magazine article from: African American Review Waligora-Davis, Nicole A. June 22, 2007 700+ words
"That black--" --Paul Laurence Dunbar, "The Lynching of Jube Benson...oppression in disguise. --Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Justice" On December 6...s death in Kentucky, Paul Laurence Dunbar's native state of Ohio suffered...
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar.(Brief...
Magazine article from: Booklist Bush, Vanessa February 1, 2006 700+ words
* Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Ed. by Gene Andrew Jarrett and Thomas Lewis Morgan...1644-8). One hundred years after the death of Dunbar, he is most remembered for his poem "We Wear the...
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar.(Brief...
Magazine article from: Library Journal Rogers, Michael April 15, 2006 700+ words
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Ohio Univ. 2006. 542p. index. ISBN 0-8214...59.95. F At the time of his 1906 death at age 33, Dunbar had published four novels, four short story collections...
"When he is least himself": Dunbar and double consciousness in African American...
Magazine article from: African American Review Mullen, Harryette June 22, 2007 700+ words
Like Paul Laurence Dunbar, and like many people who don't...writing poetry as a child. Although Dunbar was not a poet I tried to emulate...stamps, including the 1975 Paul Laurence Dunbar commemorative. I may be in the last...
For more facts and information, see all results

Source: HighBeam Research, Intimate intercessions in the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar.

©2010 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA

The AccessMyLibrary advertising network includes: womensforum.com GlamFamily