An Afro-American Poet

The first thing that strikes on e in turning over the pages of this
interesting little volume is the partial inappropriateness of the title;
for a fairly large proportion of the poems here collected can by no
stretch of the imagination be identified with "lowly life." When we read
of "richly curtained" beds, and "kingly" youths, and "my lady's bower,"
of bold Borderers, and maidens named "Phyllis" and "Ione" (in two
syllables according to Mr. Dunbar), and when one finds fully half the
pages written in the conventional language of drawing-room poetry, we
certainly get no impression of anything more lowly than mediaeval
castles, or at the very least, of ample English country-houses. Of
course, on ought not to lay too much stress upon a mere title, but in
this case it accentuates incongruity which runs all through the book, in
placing together in the most jarring and discordant contrast the sterile
elegances of exotic verse and the homely truth of American plantation
life. To pass, without even the break of a blank page, from stately
halls and Border raids, and the solitude of the moonlit glade, slap-bang
in the riot of a husking frolic, with Malindy Jane and Ike and Viney
"stomping" up and down the shrieking of a cornstalk fiddle and the
clapping ad hawhawing of a party of plantation hands, is perhaps
intended to be piquant, but is really irritating. It is too much of a
shock, and it gives the reader too much of a mental wrench. The lyrics
that really belong to lowly life should, in fact, have been grouped in
one part of the collection, with artificial "literary" verses in like
manner set off by themselves.

Then we should have had a division that would accord with the two
distinct traits of the African -- one part illustrating how really
clever and original he can be when he is thoroughly spontaneous and
natural; and the other, how comparatively feeble and ineffective he will
always show himself when he is merely imitating the Caucasian. Mr.
Howells, in his very pleasant and appreciative introduction, seems to
have some such distinction as this in his mind, but it has been best
expressed by a member of Mr. Dunbar's own race, who nearly twenty years
ago pointed out that the African intellect is not necessarily inferior
to that of other men's, but that it is essentially distinct; and that
the great mistake that is always made in discussing the negro is to
regard him as a European in embryo, who must be developed on European
lines. As a matter of fact (and Mr. Dunbar's two manners illustrate
this), the negro is truly admirable and really to be taken seriously
only when he puts his acquired imitative instincts aside and employs his
higher and wholly original gifts.

Hence it is that in these poems, while Mr. Dunbar can write very
rhythmical and pleasing English, and while only once does he (in
"Curtain," p. 93) descend to anything cheap and tasteless, it is, after
all, in the verses that deal with negro life alone that his undeniable
powers are best exhibited. In "When Malindy Sings," and "Lonesome," and
"Keep a Pluggin' Away," "The Delinquent," and "The Party," are to be
found all the genial, kindly humour of the African, his love of colour
and melody, his simplicity and innocent shrewdness, and now and then a
note of pathos that sounds through the fun with a momentary minor. Some
of it is the true poetry that is independent of mere form, and that
wells up from the unfailing springs of nature and passion and truth.

*H. T. Peck*