I LIKE to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Doradoes in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.
The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.
But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a way of running
To things that aren't quite so grand,
Which, maybe, we are best in shunning.
For some of us still like to see
The poor man in his dwelling narrow,
The hollyhock, the bumblebee,
The meadow lark, and chirping sparrow.
We like the man who soars and sings
With high and lofty inspiration;
But he who sings of common things
Shall always share our admiration.
Born in Dayton, Ohio to former slaves, Paul Laurence Dunbar perservered through difficult times to become an 'overnight' success. The only African American at Dayton Central High, he edited the school paper and graduated high in his class. Unable to find better employment, he worked as an elevator operator. To survive the monotony he composed poems, eventually compiling enough for Oak and Ivy, published in 1893 using his $4 a week salary as collateral. To recoup the $125 cost, Dunbar found an audience by (business executives take note) perfecting his "elevator speech" to sell copies to his passengers.
Dunbar had two lucky breaks over the course of his career. One was meeting Dr. Henry Archibald Tobey from Toledo, who became a friend and benefactor. Tobey backed the publishing of Dunbar's second book of poems, Majors and Minors in 1895. The volume contains many of Dunbar's best works, along with a number of poems and lyrics written in dialect.
Dunbar's second break was when Majors and Minors was reviewed by in the popular column of William Dean Howels (also thanks to Dr. Tobey) in the same issue of Harper's Weekly that announced William McKinley's nomination for president. The
combination of a glowing review and a wide
circulation made
Dunbar, just
turned 24, into a
household name overnight.
....
Welcome to Poets' Corner, one of the largest and oldest text resources on the web. The goal of this ongoing project is to develop a user-friendly library that is both a useful reference and an appealing place to browse and explore - and there is plenty of material here to explore. The collection covers roughly 7,000 works
by about 800 poets - including some of the best known works in the English language - and many obscure and forgotten works that are well worth reading .
Since its inception in 1994, this site has grown through thousands of hours of transcription, editing and coding, through the efforts of the site editors, and through the contributions of
volunteers around the world. The collection contains items ranging from sundial inscriptions to
book-length works. The site is updated regularly (well, maybe sporadically) -
click here to see what's new, often with a little commentary.
There are many ways to search and browse the content of this site. The most comprehensive listing is through the
Author Index (This is the series of letters across the top of the page, below the logo). This is a series of 13 detailed files containing a great deal of additional annotated information about each poet and their works. There is also a
Condensed Version, which provides a quicker way of scanning through poets names.
Thanks to the efforts of Jon Lachelt there is an annotated
Subject Index with 44 topics, A
Title Index, a
First Line Index and a
Combined Index, and a roughly
Chronological Index. Note: these indexes are not as inclusive as the Author Index, which covers over 95% of the collection
posted by clavdivs at 10:00 AM on December 14, 2010 [1 favorite]