Dunbar

After reading the introduction to Dunbar's poetry I expected his dialect poetry to be stereotypical and ridiculous. However, the first time I read them I didn't really see that at all. I was kind of reminded of the folktales and spirituals that we read at the beginning of the semester and I felt that he was just going for authenticity. I even felt that he made little jabs towards white people in the poetry. In "An Antebellum Sermon" he discusses what God did to the Egyptians for holding the Isrealites as slaves. In "When Malindy Sings" the speaker basically tells Miss Lucy (who I assume to be a white girl) that she should shut up because she doesn't have any natural talent. It seems to me that Dunbar tried to have deeper messages hidden behind the dialect.
After looking at things a little closer I did notice a couple places where Dunbar seemed to be backing off from those messages. In "An Antebellum Sermon" Dunbar finishes his talk about what God did to the Egyptians by pausing and saying that "I'm still a-preachin' ancient, I ain't talkin' 'bout today." Of course, I don't really blame him for trying to be a little coverty considering the time that he was writing in.