Paul Laurence Dunbar‘s ”Paradox”

In history this month we read Booker T. Washington's famous "Atlanta Exposition Speech" and selections from his autobiography UP FROM SLAVERY to show the context. In reciprocity, then, the poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar contextualizes Washington's words, and is in turn contextualized by them.

Dunbar's poem, "Paradox," echoes well themes from THE CHRISTIAN ATHEIST podcast, "where faith and reason fuse in the Incarnation." Dunbar here speaks of the contradictory realities in which we all exist, paradoxes that invoke the beauty and tragedy of life, both of which are real in the most robust of senses. Although Dunbar was not particularly religious (as I understand), I cannot avoid the resonances with the Incarnation itself in such lines as these:

I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.

Enjoy the lyric beauty and the thoughtful spiritual challenge in these verses!

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