from Tim Bete at the University of Dayton:
Nearly 100 years after Paul Laurence Dunbar’s death in 1906, one of the first African Americans to gain prominence as a poet is reaching a new, large and appreciative audience via the Internet. The Paul Laurence Dunbar Web site, sponsored by the University of Dayton, drew more than 125,000 visitors last year. They made an average of more than 750 visits per day to learn of Dunbar and read -- and hear -- his poetry.

The poems are read by Herbert Woodward Martin, professor emeritus of English at the University of Dayton, a poet himself and, like Dunbar, a Daytonian. Martin “borrows” Dunbar’s voice to recreate the fury, humor and rhythm of his works. The site also includes suggestions for teaching Dunbar in middle and secondary schools.

Dunbar “leaps over the strictures and boundaries: race, religion, sexual preference, politics, socio-economic backgrounds and touches his readers where it matters most, in the heart,” Martin said. One visitor to the Web site wrote, “If ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is the national anthem, then ‘Compensation’ should be the prayer of the dead. How in two stanzas does a people come to terms with a half millennia of human calamity?”

This spring will see publication of a Penguin Classics edition of Dunbar’s selected poems edited by Martin and also publication by Kent State University Press of a critical biography on Martin and his poetry.

Related resources:
Our library of links to 19th century poets