Poem of the Week
January 30 through
February 5, 2006
for
Black History Month
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a nationally known poet during his lifetime. A friend of presidents, he rode in the inaugural parades of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. He was college-educated from an upper middle-class background.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872, Dunbar wrote both dialect and standard English poems. Some critics faulted his humorous dialect poems for not being uplifiting to the race. Writing is how he made his living, he said; he wrote what sold, he said.
In 1899, after a stay in Europe and his accepting
a position at the Library of Congress to make ends meet, Dunbar's health plummeted with tubercolosis suspected. He spent several months in Harmon (Harman), a town now part of Denver. He noted:
"Well, it is something to sit down under
the shadow of the Rocky Mountains even
if one only goes there to die."
While here, he bought a horse, a gray mare, which he soon wrote a poem about:
Dat Ol' Mare o' Mine
-excerpt-
Want to trade me, do you, mistah ? Oh,
well, now, I reckon not,
W'y you couldn't buy my Sukey fu' a
thousan' on de spot.
Dat ol' mare o' mine ?
Yes, huh coat ah long an' shaggy, an'
ain't no shakes to see ;
Dat's a ring-bone, yes, you right, suh, an'
and she got an on'ry knee,
But dey ain't no use in talkin' , she de only
hoss fu' me,
Dat ol' mare of mine.
Co'se, I know dat Suke's contra'y, an'
she moughty ap' to vex ;
But you got to mek erlowance fu' de na-
ture of huh sex ;
Dat ol' mare of mine.
Ef you pull her on de lef' han ; she plum
'termined to go right,
A cannon couldn't skeer huh, but she
bound to tek a fright
At a piece of o' common paper, or anyt'ing
whut's white,
Dat ol' mare of mine.
.
Also here, poet Dunbar absorbed enough of the West for a novel -- The Love of Landry, which was published in 1900 -- about a sickly girl from
the East who meets a cowboy 'out West.
Paul Laurence Dunbar died February 9, 1906, in Dayton, Ohio, of tubercolosis. His final years were complicated by alcohol and a failed marriage.
Source:
The Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar
by Lida Keck Wiggins.
Dodd, Mead, 1907.
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