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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.4
EAN: 9780142437827
ISBN: 0142437824
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2004-03-30
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2004-03-30
Studio: Penguin Classics

Paul Laurence Dunbar was “the most promising young colored man” in nineteenth-century America, according to Frederick Douglass, and subsequently one of the most controversial. His plantation lyrics, written while he was an elevator boy in Ohio, established Dunbar as the premier writer of dialect poetry and garnered him international recognition. More than a vernacular lyricist, Dunbar was also a master of classical poetic forms, who helped demonstrate to post–Civil War America that literary genius did not reside solely in artists of European descent. William Dean Howells called Dunbar’s dialect poems “evidence of the essential unity of the human race, which does not think or feel black in one and white in another, but humanly in all.”

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A pleasant surprise
Review: For all the times I've read that this poet-friend of the Wright Brothers is best known for his dialect poems, I'd never really considered the corollary: that he was a fine poet in standard English as well. And what poems they are! If poetry is supposed to be a subjective and emotional art, Mr. Dunbar has mastered it. I felt my heart wrenched over more than one poem. This is a very nice volume to have if one wants a sampling of Mr. Dunbar's art in an inexpensive format. Dover has done a great job in the selection, balancing the dialect poems and the standard English ones. If you only want one volume from this poet, this is the one to get.

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