Paul Laurence Dunbar
Quick answer: Paul Laurence Dunbar mastered two languages of poetry at once. Study his mask imagery, dialect craft and formal precision, with tips for your own work.
Paul Laurence Dunbar became the first African American poet to reach a national audience, and he did it before the age of twenty-five, in an America one generation out of slavery. Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872 to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky, he worked as an elevator operator while publishing his first book, Oak and Ivy, in 1893, selling copies to his passengers.
Dunbar wrote in two distinct registers: polished standard English lyric and a rendered Black vernacular that white audiences demanded and he privately resented. That double practice, and the poem he wrote about its cost, gives modern writers one of the sharpest lessons anywhere in the craft: how to write for an audience that misreads you, and win.
The poem
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Paul Laurence Dunbar, 'We Wear the Mask' (1896)
Two audiences, one poet
Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), introduced by the influential critic William Dean Howells, made Dunbar famous, but Howells praised the dialect verse above the standard English poems, fixing a public expectation Dunbar spent his short life fighting. He wrote novels, stories and lyrics for musical theatre, toured England, worked at the Library of Congress, and died of tuberculosis in 1906, aged thirty-three.
His legacy runs forward visibly: Maya Angelou took the title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from his poem 'Sympathy', and his mask image became a founding metaphor for African American literature.
Signature moves
Dunbar's technique rewards close reading in both of his registers.
What you can learn from him
Write the same poem twice: once in your most formal English, once in the speech of your kitchen or street. Comparing the two versions will teach you what each register can carry, which is a discovery no exercise in a single voice provides.
Try a refrain form, a rondeau or triolet, for a subject involving concealment, letting the repeated line change meaning as the poem darkens around it. Structure and language are scored separately by contest judges, including Writory's, and Dunbar shows how a repeating structure can itself dramatise the theme.
Where to start reading
Read 'We Wear the Mask' and 'Sympathy' first; both are short, public domain and inexhaustible. Then Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) for the full early range, the dialect classic 'When Malindy Sings' with its argument about trained versus natural song, and 'The Poet', his eight-line protest at being praised for a jingle in a broken tongue.
What poets can take from this
- Draft the same poem in two registers and study what changes.
- Use a refrain form when your subject involves repetition or concealment.
- Let an animal or object carry feelings too raw for direct statement.
- Test metre by reciting from memory; Dunbar's lines were built to be spoken.
- Write one poem about how audiences misread your work.
Try it yourself
Write a poem with a repeated line that returns three times, describing something you show the world that is not the truth. Let the refrain feel heavier at each return.
Questions
What is Paul Laurence Dunbar's most famous poem?
'We Wear the Mask' (1896), a rondeau about concealed suffering, and 'Sympathy' (1899), whose caged-bird image later gave Maya Angelou the title of her memoir.
Why did Dunbar write in dialect?
Vernacular verse was hugely popular with white audiences and editors, and it brought him fame and income. He valued his standard English poems more, and his poem 'The Poet' records his frustration at the imbalance in praise.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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