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Article: Caressed by the word: the lives and love of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. (tribute).
- Article from:
- Black Issues Book Review
- Article date:
- March 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Cox, Matthews & Associates. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I didn't go looking for Paul Laurence Dunbar, but he found me anyway. It was in Los Angeles in 1972, one hundred years after his birth. My seventh grade English teacher, Mrs. Harlick, had told us to pick a poet's work to read to the class. Mom suggested Dunbar's "In the Morning," about a father trying to wake his sleepy head son and rush him off to school. I was, at the time, an avowed poetry-hater. Yet I found myself enchanted by Dunbar's verses, such as these opening lines from "In the Morning":
'Lias! 'Lias! Bless de Lawd! Don' you know de day's erbroad? Ef you don'
git up, you scamp, Dey'll be trouble in dis camp.
Dunbar's easy humor captured ...