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Sterling Brown on Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Dunbar
and Traditional Dialect
(excerpts)
[1937]
Early Dialect
Dunbar was not the first Negro
poet to use dialect, although his predecessors had not realized
the possibilities of the medium. The influential work of white
authors in Negro dialect, from Stephen Foster and the minstrel
song writers through local colorists such as Irwin Russell, J.
A. Macon, Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page, will be
our concern in the concluding chapters devoted to poetry. In
spite of these forerunners, however, Dunbar was not only the
first American Negro to "feel the Negro life aesthetically
and express it lyrically," as William Dean Howells wrote,
but also the first American poet to handle Negro folklife with
any degree of fullness. As a portrayal of Negro life, Dunbar's
picture has undoubted limitations, but they are by no means so
grave as those of Russell and Page.
Dunbar:
Plantation Tradition
Writing in the heyday of the
dialect vogue, Dunbar (1872-1906) could not completely escape
the influences of these two writers, but the shadow of Page,
much the lesser poet, fell more darkly upon him. Almost all of
Dunbar's poetry about slavery is of the Page school, some of it
directly copied. Old slaves grieve over the lost days, insisting
upon the kindliness of old master and mistress, and the
boundless mutual affection. Treated approvingly, they grieve
that the freedmen deserted the plantation, or wish to die so
that they can get to heaven to continue serving old master, or
faced by their master's poverty, indignantly decide to
"Tell
Marse Linkum for to take his freedom back."
The master is generally pictured
as "smiling on de darkies from de hall," or listening
to the corn-song from his veranda with a tear in his eye. In Parted,
a slave, separated from his beloved, knows that he will come
back to her, since
God knows ouah
heats, my little dove,
He'll help us from his th'one above
--which seems to be a cruel
misreading of history. The very few other poems that admit the
distresses of slavery, forget them in memories of cabin dances.
"When Dey Listed Colored Soldiers" shows Negroes
fighting for their own freedom, but love for the grayclad
masters is expressed as well.
Folk Life in
Dunbar
These unworthy perpetuations of
plantation sentimentalities are fortunately not what Dunbar is
known by. He is at his best in his picture of the folk life of
his day. He did not know the deep South, but, a willing listener
to his mother, an ex-slave, he probably got a good background of
folk lore and speech, and he knew small Negro communities of
Ohio, Kentucky, Eastern Shore Maryland and the District of
Columbia. Influenced by the popular James Whitcomb Riley, he
wrote that the
sandy roads is
gleamin' wile de city ways is black
Come back, honey, case yo’ country home is best.
His fancy is caught by the
parties, spelling bees, church services, by nodding and drowsing
in front of the hickory fire, by ripened cider ready to be drunk
while the back log is slowly burning through. He deals with
charming rural love-affairs, from which the bitterness and
disillusion of his personal love poetry are noticeably lacking.
Farmers brag of an old mare, or welcome the rain so that they
can tinker 'round mending harness, or, like Tam O'Shanter,
return a bit worse for drink to irate spouses, and lay the blame
for the slowness on old Suke, the nag. For these people Dunbar
conveys his friendship warmly.
The Happy
Peasant
Though he has written that
"it's mighty hard to giggle when dey's nuffin' in de
pot," he barely mentions dire poverty, his world being one
where
De po'est ones
kin live an' play and eat
Whair we draws a simple livin' from de forest an' de tide.
He writes of the countryman's
delight in good food, of "wheat bread white ez cotton an' a
egg pone jes' like gol'"; of hog jowl, roasted shoat, and
all the partitions of the hog; of chickens, turkeys, sweet
potato stew, mince pies. One of his poems on possums is a rhymed
cooking recipe; one of his less worthy pieces tells of a
backwoods suitor winning a wife with a possum. He has a fondness
for poetry about hunting and fishing, and the festal seasons of
Thanksgiving and Christmas. He is definitely a poet of the happy
hearthside and pastoral contentment. Poems that do not show the
pleasant life are few. "Blue" suggests a vaguely
understood melancholy, poems like "Two Little Boots, "
with the touching quality of Eugene Field's "Little Boy
Blue," express the grief of stricken parents, and "A
Christmas Song" makes use of the folk-saying that a green
Christmas means "a hongry churchyard." But explicit
revelation of the folk Negro's hardships is absent.
Best Qualities
Dunbar's best qualities are
clear. Such early poems as "Accountability" and
"An Antebellum Sermon" show flashes of the unforced
gay humor that was to be with him even to the last.
[H]is grasp upon folk-speech is
generally sure. His rhythms almost never stumble and are
frequently catchy: at times as in "Itching Heels" he
gets the syncopation of a folk dance. Most of all he took up the
Negro peasant as a clown, and made him a likeable person.
Pastoral
Picture
Unlike Irwin Russell,
whose views of Negro life and character are those of an outsider
on a different plane, Dunbar, writing more from within, humanizes
his characters and gets more of their true life. There is still,
however, a great deal omitted. His picture is undoubtedly
idealized. Believing with the romanticists that "God made the
country and man made the town," writing that
"the folks I meet in any
other spot,
Ain't half so good as those I knowed back home in Possum
Trot"
he left out many of
the more unpleasant aspects of life. His backsliders are guilty
only of such "sins" as dancing after joining church, or
of comic fisticuffs. More serious is his omission of the hardships
that the Negro folk met with as much in Dunbar's day as in ours.
Reasons for such omission may have been Dunbar's own
kindheartedness and forgivingness, or his lack of deep
acquaintance with the South. Or it may have been the influence of
his literary school, his audience and his publishers, or of the
professional conciliators who in that day guided racial
expression. Be the reason what it may, one of these or all, the
fact of omission remains. Dunbar concentrated upon a pastoral
picture. No picture of Negro life that is only pastoral can be
fully true.
Dunbar: Standard
English
[M]any of his own
people welcome the poems in standard (miscalled
"literary") English and consider the dialect to be
merely pot-boiling, or at least, the harmless straying of genius.
* * *
Dunbar’s poems in
standard English are of many sorts. There are many love-poems,
some heavily sentimentalized like "Ione," which is
certainly worse than any of his dialect; and echoes of belated
romantic poets, conventional and undistinguished. At times,
however, as in "The Debt," "Parted," and
"Forever" he speaks simply and directly; sometimes the
burden of his own unfortunate love affair breaks through and the
result is rewarding.
I had no known before
Forever was so long a word
The slow stroke of the clock of time
I had not heard. . . .
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RACE CONSCIOUS
POETRY
Dunbar likewise wrote
race-conscious poetry. This varies in quality from the school-boy
recitation pieces like "The Colored Soldiers" and
"Black Sampson of Brandywine,"
an ebony giant
Black as the pinions of night--
to more dignified
sonnets to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robert Gould Shaw, the militant
Douglass and the unmilitant Booker T. Washington. Only
occasionally does he speak out. "The New South" can
still refer, in the accents of Gray's "Elegy" to the
slave "jocund as the day," can contrast the abuses of
the present with the "glory of the South's ancient
days:"
And thou [the South] wilt take,
e'en with thy spear in rest
Thy dusky children to thy saving breast.
"We Wear The
Mask" is probably a poem about the race; but it is
generalized protest, still masked. "The Haunted Oak" is
a specific poem upon lynching in the ballad form; the spokesman is
the oak tree. When Dunbar dealt with the harsher aspects of Negro
life, he discarded not only dialect, but also directness and
simplicity. Such a poem as "Ode to Ethiopia" is popular
with Negro audiences, probably because of its propaganda of
aspiration. Like so much of Negro expression of the period, it
praises the nobility of forgetting and forgiving.
Dunbar:
Summary
Many of Dunbar's
standard English poems are deservedly among his best known. His
mastery of rhythm and of the poetic vocabulary of romantic poetry
is superior to that of any preceding Negro poet. Being too facile,
however, and having little chance for thorough grounding in his
craft and in American
Tennysonians to which he belonged. Although his standard English
poems lack the freshness, humor, and life of his dialect, their
imitativeness is to be expected from a poet of his time and
upbringing, and their achievement in many instances is high.
Source: Negro
Poetry and Drama. Copyright © 1937 by the
Associates in Negro Folk Education.
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The Price of Civilization
Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
By Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Price of Civilization is a book that is essential reading for every American. In a forceful, impassioned, and personal voice, he offers not only a searing and incisive diagnosis of our country’s economic ills but also an urgent call for Americans to restore the virtues of fairness, honesty, and foresight as the foundations of national prosperity. Sachs finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, offering shortsighted solutions such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to address complex economic problems that require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we have profoundly underestimated globalization’s long-term effects on our country, which create deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty, and the environment. America’s single biggest economic failure, Sachs argues, is its inability to come to grips with the new global economic realities. Sachs describes a political system that has lost its ethical moorings, in which ever-rising campaign contributions and lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the citizenry. . . . Sachs offers a plan to turn the crisis around. He argues persuasively that the problem is not America’s abiding values, which remain generous and pragmatic, but the ease with which political spin and consumerism run circles around those values. He bids the reader to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and one another. |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 29 June 2008
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