Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) is a collection of poems by African
American author Paul Laurence Dunbar. Published while Dunbar was at a
turning point in his career as one of the nation's leading black poets,
Lyrics of Lowly Life combined his hugely successful volumes Oak and
Ivy (1892) and Majors and Minors (1896), establishing his reputation
as an artist with a powerful vision of faith and perseverance who sought
to capture and examine the diversity of the African American experience.
In "The Poet and His Song," Dunbar compares the art of poetry to tilling
the soil, a slow and painstaking process requiring full commitment, body
and soul, to the task at hand: "My days are never days of ease; / I till
my ground and prune my trees. / When ripened gold is all the plain, / I
put my sickle to the grain. / I labor hard, and toil and sweat, / While
others dream within the dell; / But even while my brow is wet, / I sing
my song, and all is well." For Dunbar, the reward is the song itself,
both an act of labor and a celebration of life, emphasizing the role of
the poet as not just a dreamer, but a doer. Throughout this collection,
Dunbar explores the role of the poet in society, grounding each poem
within his identity as a black man in America. In "Frederick Douglass,"
an elegy written for the occasion of the great man's passing, Dunbar
makes clear the consequences of pride and defiance in a nation built by
slaves: "He dared the lightning in the lightning's track, / And answered
thunder with his thunder back." With a beautifully designed cover and
professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Paul Laurence
Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life is a classic of African American
literature reimagined for modern readers.
