POETS Day! Paul Laurence Dunbar

It’s rare when a POETS Day featured poet comes complete his own POETS Day call to arms, but such is the case with Paul Laurence Dunbar. “Sympathy,” one of his most popular works, contains the iconic line “I know why the caged bird sings.” Many know the 1899 poem and appreciate it on its merits, but most these days more are likely to know it by association with Maya Angelou’s eponymously titled autobiography. The poem, or at very least the line, is startling in the ready empathy it evokes; now an expression of black oppression and a powerful image for civil rights movements.

In 1897, Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore, soon to be Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar, moved to Washington D.C. where Paul had been hired as an attendant, which I assume is sort of clerk, at the Library of Congress. It must have seemed an exciting opportunity for the literary-minded poet. He hated it with a mad (poetic) passion. Alice told him to quit and focus exclusively on writing. I don’t think he was hard to convince. She wrote about what prompted him to write the poem in 1914.

“The iron grating of the book stacks in the Library of Congress suggested to him the bars of the bird’s cage. June and July days are hot. All out of doors called and the trees of the shaded streets of Washington were tantalizingly suggestive of his beloved streams and fields. The torrid sun poured its rays down into the courtyard of the library and heated the iron grilling of the book stacks until they were like prison bars in more senses than one. The dry dust of the dry books (ironic incongruity!–a poet shut up with medical works), rasped sharply in his hot throat, and he understood how the bird felt when it beats its wings against its cage.”

Prepare to have empathy evoked.

Sympathy
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals –
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting –
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, –
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –
I know why the caged bird sings!

You don’t need to go full Dunbar and dump your job for a carefree career in writing. That’s folly. But you can find temporary relief in the acronym. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Do your worst. Connive, dissemble, dis-other stuff; whatever it takes to escape your job and kick off the weekend a few hours ahead of schedule. There are parks, streams, wind stirring “soft through the springing grass.” There are strip clubs too. It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will. If you can, spare a moment for a little verse first.

***

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born to two emancipated slaves in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. There are little tidbits that stand out when reading about people’s lives. His mother learned to read in order to guide his education. I don’t know what to do with that because it’s secondary to any quicky biographical gist. It tells me something about mindset and an understanding that circumstances can be changed, but that’s her. Maybe Dunbar held a long view; pulled a few threads of wisdom from mom. Either way, that struck as more than “Item:”.

He excelled as a student, as his mother made sure it happened. Per The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, “he was elected president of his class,” at Dayton’s Central High School. Wikipedia doesn’t mention that but does say that he was president of the school’s literary society. Both agree that he was chosen to deliver a graduation poem – he’d been writing them since at least age sixteen – and that he was chosen as editor of the school’s paper. He was the only black student.

On graduation, he applied to law offices and newspapers but was refused employment because of his race, eventually taking a job as an elevator operator. That’s a jarring juxtaposition and seemingly random. BMOC one moment and then nigh on untouchable.

It was during his time as an elevator operator that he put together Oak and Ivy. He published on borrowed money but made his investment back quickly. A lot of his sales went to regular elevator customers.

He wrote some poems in dialect and some not. Initially, he went to a pair of brothers he knew from high school and would count as lifelong friends, to publish a volume of only dialect poems. They had worked with him on the six-month run of The Tattler, a newspaper Dunbar started out of high school but ultimately had to abandon. The brothers weren’t set up to print books. I assume there’s different equipment involved. They steered him towards someone who had the capacity. The brothers would go on to open a bicycle shop and eventually make their name in 12 seconds, 12 again, then 15, and finally 59 seconds at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The new publisher talked Dunbar into, or was talked into by Dunbar, expanding the scope of his proposed book to include his works in standard English, Oaks and Ivy divided such that those under the heading “Oak” were traditional and “Ivy” not.

An Easy-Goin’ Feller

Ther’ ain’t no use in all this strife,
An’ hurryin’, pell-mell, right thro’ life.
I don’t believe in goin’ too fast
To see what kind o’ road you’ve passed.
It ain’t no mortal kind o’ good,
‘N’ I would n’t hurry ef I could.
I like to jest go joggin’ ‘long,
To limber up my soul with song;
To stop awhile ‘n’ chat the men,
‘N’ drink some cider now an’ then.
Do’ want no boss a-standin’ by
To see me work; I allus try
To do my dooty right straight up,
An’ earn what fills my plate an’ cup.
An’ ez fur boss, I’ll be my own,
I like to jest be let alone,
To plough my strip an’ tend my bees,
An’ do jest like I doggoned please.
My head’s all right, an’ my heart’s meller,
But I’m a easy-goin’ feller.

A second book, Majors and Minors, was well reviewed in Harper’s Weekly by William Dean Howells, bringing in a nationwide audience. It too was divided between dialect and standard. Both were praised, but it was the dialect that proved more popular. By the end of his short life, Dunbar put out a dozen well regarded books of poetry, four novels which were pretty good or pretty bad depending on who you listen to, a play, and In Dahomey, the first musical with an entirely black cast and crew to hit Broadway.

In his time, he rubbed shoulders with and was praised by luminaries. Fredrick Douglass, James Whitcomb Riley, and Booker T. Washington. He was respected and in demand, but not necessarily comfortable with why. It appears he felt typecast. The dialect poems made his name. Per Wikipedia, “‘my natural speech is dialect’ and ‘my love is for the Negro pieces’,” but also, “I am tired, so tired of dialect.”

This is my favorite of his I’ve read.

The Poet

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.

Somewhere around 1895 Dunbar started seeing Moore. He introduced himself in a letter, which I like a great deal. The two began exchanging love poems. I’ve read that they published complimentary works, romantic questions or challenges and clever responses. I can’t seem to find a listing of which poems those were, but the next two are both from Lyrics of Lowly Life. That book was published in 1896, the time of their early courtship when passion ran high. It’s possible these were written before their meeting, but I’m making the assumption that these were written for Alice.

Passion and Love

A maiden wept and, as a comforter,
Came one who cried, ‘I love thee,’ and he seized
Her in his arms and kissed her with hot breath,
That dried the tears upon her flaming cheeks.
While evermore his boldly blazing eye
Burned into hers; but she uncomforted
Shrank from his arms and only wept the more.

Then one came and gazed mutely in her face
With wide and wistful eyes; but still aloof
He held himself; as with a reverent fear,
As one who knows some sacred presence nigh.
And as she wept he mingled tear with tear,
That cheered her soul like dew a dusty flower,—
Until she smiled, approached, and touched his hand!

Longing

If you could sit with me beside the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest dreamings o’er and o’er;
I think I should not find the clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves complaining at the shore.

If you could sit with me upon the shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in the days of old,
I think I should not mind the chill baptismal spray,
Nor find my hand and heart and all the world so cold.

If you could walk with me upon the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would then be put away,
And I could give back laughter for the Ocean’s moan!

Dunbar beat Alice. In 1900 he received a diagnosis of tuberculosis for which the doctor recommended clean air and whisky. Already a drinker, with the doctor’s imprimatur he drank more and the beatings became more brutal. The couple moved to Colorado for his health. There, in 1902, he nearly killed her. There was no divorce, but that was it. She left. He returned to Dayton where he lived with his mother until tuberculosis took him in 1906 at the age of thirty-three.

I believe it’s possible that he loved his dialect poems as much as his other work but was frustrated that he wasn’t equally recognized for both. If it had been the other way round, had his dialect poems gotten less recognition, he probably would have felt that his mainstream work was neglected. Demand adds an onus, however so slight, of work. The neglected becomes a project in need of nurturing.

It’s always caged in “some critics say” or “detractors say” so I have no names to attribute this to. I can’t even tell you if these were his contemporary critics or modern readers peering back, but I’ve read that some say he was either the dialect writer who put on a mask for a larger audience or a mainstream poet who capitalized on the popularity of folk or homespun moods. At times he leaves hints but they’re contradictory. I don’t think he has to be one or the other. I’m also open to the idea that at times he was one and at times the other.

I’m caught by the love poem persona. There are forgivable annoyances in his work. He had a fitful habit of avoiding enjambment that, like in “Longing” above, makes it appear that expression was forced into form more than form acted as expression’s vehicle. Such things can be put aside when reading poets who you didn’t know beat their wife. You notice them when you’re not feeling in as Christian a mood. Is Dunbar the lover and the violent husband?

“Sympathy” is a poem for the ages. “The Poet” is better still. This last is terribly powerful.

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!