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Writing in the A.M.E. Review in 1914 the Paul Laurence Dunbar’s widow argued that "a poet is a
poet because he understands; because he is born with a divine kinship with all things, and he is a
poet in direct ratio to his power of sympathy."
Dunbar 1872-1906
Paul Laurence Dunbar published in such mainstream journals as Century, Lipincott’s Monthly,
the Atlantic Monthly, and the Saturday Evening Post. A gifted poet and a precursor to the Harlem
Renaissance, Dunbar was read by both blacks and whites in turn-of-the-century America.
Dunbar, the son of two former slaves, was born in Dayton, Ohio, and attended the public schools
of that city. He was taught to read by his mother,
During his years at Dayton's Central High, Dunbar was the school's only student of color, but it
was his scholarly performance that distinguished him.
After graduating from high school in 1891, racial discrimination forced Dunbar to accept a job as
an elevator operator in a Dayton hotel. He wrote on the job during slack hours. He became well
known as the "elevator boy poet" after James Newton Mathews invited him to read his poetry at
the annual meeting of the Western Association of Writers, held in Dayton in 1892.
Dunbar published eleven volumes of poetry (1893-1902)
While Dunbar sought an appropriate literary form for the representation of African American
vernacular expression, he was also deeply ambivalent about his undertaking in this area. He
recognized that many of his experiments yielded imperfect results and he was concerned that
prominent white critics such as William Dean Howells praised his work for the wrong reasons,
setting a tone that other Dunbar critics would follow for years as they virtually ignored his
standard English verse and his published experiments with Irish, German, and Western regional
dialects.
Sympathy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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 its 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!
rhyme scheme—the pattern of end rhyme in a poem
stanza—a group of lines
symbol—something that is itself but also stands for something else. Like a flag is a piece of
colored cloth that stands for a country.
"Sympathy" is a heartfelt cry of a poet who finds himself imprisoned amid traditions and
prejudices he feels powerless to destroy . . . .
A poem like "Sympathy"—with its repeated line, "I know what the caged bird feels, alas!"—can
be read as a cry against slavery, but was probably written out of the feeling that the poet’s talent
was imprisoned in the conventions of his time and exigencies of the literary marketplace.