to poems in open forms that are nevertheless
steeped in blues rhythms and idioms. Some of the
poems take the form of blues lyrics—a section of
Play Ebony, Play Ivory is titled “Blues Songs”—
while others, shaped by the poet’s usage of ver-
nacular speech, speak to readers in the familiar
tones of “back home.” “Knees of a Natural Man,”
for example, portrays a day in the life of a trans-
planted country boy in the big city. The voice in the
poem represents the millions of black voices recall-
ing the difficult transition from a rural to an urban
lifestyle. Rivers are also of particular significance
in Dumas’s poetry; growing up near the Missis-
sippi, he may have been influenced by LANGSTON
HUGHES’s use of rivers in poems such as “The Negro
Speaks of Rivers.” In “Afro-American” the poet says
“my black mother is a long-haired sensuous river /
where the Kongo flows into the Mississippi,” and as
in Hughes’s poem a connection is made between
Africa (“the Kongo”) and the Mississippi River.
As a writer associated with the BLACK ARTS
MOVEMENT, Henry Dumas wrote during a time
when many African-American writers were start-
ing to embrace Africa as a cultural motherland,
while rejecting Christianity as “the white man’s
religion,” but Dumas did not reject the religious
practices of the majority of the culture. His cos-
mology draws from Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism,
the Old Testament, Native American spirituality,
and black American hoodoo, as well from various
diverse forms of African religious thought, such as
Akan, Dagon, and Yoruba. Instead of totally reject-
ing Christianity in works such as “Ark of Bones,”
he blurs the lines between African cosmology and
Christian beliefs. Not only do the spiritual realism
and depictions of African-American life in pasto-
ral settings set the stage for writers such as Morri-
son, GLORIA NAYLOR, ERNEST GAINES, and RANDALL
KENAN, but his stories and poems also anticipate
the experimental writers who would later emerge
in the tradition such as CLARENCE MAJOR, NATHAN-
IEL MACKEY, and HARRYETTE MULLEN. Morrison’s
borrowing of the name of Dumas’s birthplace,
Sweet Home, Arkansas, for the plantation setting
in BELOVED serves as an indication of Dumas’s
importance to the writers of the Black Arts Move-
ment and beyond.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collier, Eugenia. “Wisdom in Goodbye, Sweetwater:
Suggestions for Further Study.” Black American
Literature Forum 22 (Summer 1988): 192–199.
Redmond, Eugene B. Introduction. “The Ancient and
Recent Voices within Henry Dumas.” In Goodbye,
Sweetwater: New and Selected Stories, by Henry
Dumas. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 1988.
———. Introduction. “Poet Henry Dumas: Distance
Runner, Stabilizer, Distiller.” In Knees of a Natural
Man: The Selected Poems of Henry Dumas. New
York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989.
Taylor, Clyde. “Henry Dumas: Legacy of a Long-
Breath Singer.” Black American Literature Forum
22 (Summer 1988): 353–364.
Werner, Craig. “Dumas, Nationalism, and Multi-
cultural Mythology.” Black American Literature
Forum 22 (Summer 1988): 394–399.
Williams, Dana A. “Making the Bones Live Again: A
Look at the ‘Bones People’ in August Wilson’s Joe
Turner Come and Gone and Henry Dumas’s ‘Ark
of Bones.’ ” CLA Journal 42 (1999): 309–319.
Reggie YoungDunbar, Paul Laurence (1872–1906)
One of the two best-selling turn-of-the-century
American poets, black or white, Paul Laurence
Dunbar is best known for being the finest African-
American composer of black dialect poetry. Also
the author of a notable body of traditional English
poetry, numerous short stories, three novels, es-
says, songs, and Broadway musicals, Dunbar never
fully enjoyed his fame; he resented the insistence
of white publishers, critics, and consumers that he
produce more of his celebrated “minstrelized” dia-
lect work and less traditional, “literary” verse.
Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio, to Joshua
Dunbar and Matilda Glass Burton Murphy, both
former Kentucky plantation slaves. Although he
was the only black student in his high school,
Dunbar’s consummate charm and extracurricular
activities made him a popular addition to the stu-
dent body: He served as editor in chief of his school
newspaper, he was the president of the school liter-
ary society, he founded and edited a black news-154 Dunbar, Paul Laurence