Paul Laurence Dunbar
The son of formerly enslaved parents, Paul Laurence Dunbar became the first African American poet to win national and international fame, writing “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” before his death at thirty-three.
Theme
freedom
3 poems
freedom
Sympathy
The poem that gave Maya Angelou her memoir title. Dunbar’s caged bird — beating its wings, singing not for joy but as a prayer for freedom — became one of American poetry’s great images of oppression and longing.
The Prisoner of Chillon (Selected Excerpts)
A lyric tale of endurance, “The Prisoner of Chillon” finds inner liberty shadowed by grief — the world as a wider cell.