Retort

Paul Laurence Dunbar's 'Retort' is a poem of quiet devastation: four sharp stanzas that flip the gaze of white condescension back onto its source. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, when Black Americans faced daily humiliations wrapped in the language of courtesy, Dunbar constructs a speaker who refuses the role of supplicant. The poem's power lies in its restraint. There is no shout, no plea for recognition. Instead, a measured, almost courteous tone delivers lines that cut like glass: 'When you crost my path, I did not fall / My knee did not buckle at your call.' It is a poem about the dignity of not being diminished, about the quiet strength required to hold one's head high when the world insists on looking down. Dunbar, who faced rejection from both white publishers and some Black critics who dismissed his dialect work, understood intimately the politics of respectability. 'Retort' is his answer to anyone who confuse politeness with weakness.