The Poet and His Song: Selected Poems · Paul Laurence Dunbar

"A song is but a little thing, / And yet what joy it is to sing!" So begins the poem that gives this book its name - and its spirit.Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), the son of formerly enslaved parents and the first African American poet to win national and international fame, wrote in an age that gave him every reason for despair, and answered it, again and again, with hope.This volume gathers the most hopeful and affirming poems from his two great collections, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) and Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899): lyrics of faith and perseverance ("Not They Who Soar," "Keep A-Pluggin' Away," "For the Man Who Fails"), of love and the turning seasons, and of plain human joy. The selection is weighted to his standard-English verse, with a handful of his sunniest dialect songs among them.A newly curated and typeset Northlume Library edition, behind an original mixed-media cover illustration by JVB Atelier Designs.