Sympathy

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to gain a national reputation in the United States. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved, he published poems, stories and novels before his early death at the age of thirty-three. Much of his verse was written in standard English, and some in the dialect of the time; the poem heard here belongs to the former, and is among his most admired.

Sympathy appeared in 1899. It is built around a single image, the caged bird, and it carries a note of protest that is all the more affecting for its restraint. A line from the poem became the title of Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiographical work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which helped bring the poem to a wide new audience.

This is a multi-version recording, a format that LibriVox uses for short poems. Sixteen volunteers each recorded the poem, and the results are collected here one after another. Listening to them in sequence is a small lesson in interpretation. Some readers are quiet, others forceful, some slow, others quick, and the same words take on different shades each time. The whole collection lasts about twenty-five minutes. It was prepared in honour of Martin Luther King Day, and it suits a moment of reflection at any time of the year. The collection is also useful for those who teach or study poetry, since it offers an unusually clear demonstration of how much a reader's choices shape a poem. Even listeners who know the verse well may be surprised by what a different voice can bring out.