Paul Lawrence Dunbar is a poet who was only one generation removed from slavery. As his poetry often reflects, slavery affected his perspective and presuppositions despite it never directly touching him. Just by reading "We Wear the Mask," "When Malindy Sings," "Sympathy" and "The Haunted Oak" I felt a range of emotions. While "When Malindy Sings" was my favorite of the four, I am focusing on "Sympathy." The picture that is painted in our minds is one of a bird in cage, who can see his freedom, but can't quite get there. The bird "beats his wing till its blood is red on the cruel bars; For he must fly back to his perch and cling" (Dunbar 8-9). The restraint of the cage causes the bird agony, and the readers to sympathize. Most everyone has been restrained in one way or another and can understand what Dunbar is getting at. The repetition of the line "I know why the caged bird sings" adds to the brevity of the poem. And the contrast of freedom and a cage, of sadness and of joy, makes it easier for the reader to sympathize with the bird. The weight is heavy. The weight of knowing how much torture that slaves went through in order to just get a taste of freedom is relentless. It changes people.
Restraints change people. And the people eventually change the restraints. Aaron Belz makes a more lighthearted poem about restraints, although he uses the word constraint. "You Can't Pick Your Friend's Nose" takes the idea of restraint and shows how people change them based on morals and nature. While Dunbar makes us feel like we are restrained, Belz helps us see the outside perspective of restraints and the causes of them. The lightheartedness continues throughout the poem, but at the end of it, you are left asking a question about the bigger picture: "Why are they changing?" Belz playfully uses a common phrase "You can't pick your friends nose" to ask a deep question, the same way Dunbar uses the common idea of a caged bird to evoke a deep emotion --Sympathy.
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