FREE ESSAY ON "THE POET" BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

"THE POET" BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Before we pass on from this world it would be nice if we had left our mark, given our
contribution, made our claim in the history of human civilization. Wouldn't it be
wonderful to achieve such a goal? Wouldn't it be horrible to have attained that level of
recognition and yet be recognized for things you deemed inferior? In the poem "The Poet",
Paul Laurence Dunbar expresses his remorse at having written superior Standard English
literature and yet only be known and praised for his Dialect works.
The first way Dunbar achieves this meaning is by his use of language. When Dunbar is
talking about standard English poetry he speaks "of life, serenely sweet/ With, now and
then, a deeper tone" (Dunbar 1-2). As he's talking about his standard English poems, he
uses sentimental language invoking images of peacefulness and bliss. The second half of
the line alludes to the fact that Dunbar feels with standard English he is more free with
expression than Dialect which he feels can only represent emotions of happiness or
sadness. In the second stanza Dunbar tries to develop feelings of lament in the reader.
"He sang of love when earth was young/ And love, itself, was in his lays" (Dunbar 5-6).
He continues to use romantic almost even melodramatic language to bring to mind images of
earlier times that were better than the dreary world of his day. In the last lines of the
poem the language changes and expresses grief over the fact that the general public only
recognizes him for his Dialect works. Dunbar writes "But ah, the world, it turned to
praise/ A jingle in a broken tongue" (Dunbar 7-8). Here he is mocking the Dialect
tradition, as he doesn't consider it to be poetry. He refers to it as a "jingle", which
causes the reader to think of advertisements and "selling out". We know that he was
talking about the Dialect tradition by his use of the words "broken tongue". By calling
Dialect tradition a "broken tongue", Dunbar is referring to his own feelings that the
white's attempt at capturing the African-American's speech by Dialect tradition is a
poor, if not incorrect, representation. Even though not many blacks in the day thought
the Dialect tradition illustrated their true speech, they were confined to use what they
had. Because that style of writing was so popular at the time, Dunbar's Dialect pieces
got more notoriety than his standard English; and unfortunately the latter he felt was of
higher quality.
Another way Dunbar criticizes his inability to escape the brand of a Dialect poet is in
the structure of the poem. About three quarters of the poem is Dunbar speaking about his
standard English works. Then the very last two lines of the poem he contrasts the
standard English side of his work with the Dialect tradition writing he has done. Here he
is trying to tell the reader that even though a majority of his work was done in standard
English, he is only recognized for his mastery of the Dialect tradition. 
The last part of the first stanza, "He voiced the world's absorbing beat" (Dunbar 4),
refers to Dunbar's attempt at writing about people and the things he felt were important
to people in general. Although the subject, for the most part, was about
African-Americans, it could have easily been extrapolated to every person. His
frustration with the blindness of American readers is clear by the end of the poem.
Dunbar eventually died still angry at the fact that although slavery had been dead for
over sixty years, he was still enslaved, by the wants of the American public, to produce
Dialect tradition literature when he knew he was one of the world's best standard English
writers of his day.
Bibliography
Toni Morrison's Beloved