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Title: Perils of Public Poetry
Review: A much finer collection of Harper's verse than this could be made. Here are collected the most standard examples of Harper's public verse--in which the voice is declamatory and oratorical in a most wooden way and effective only in the public lecture hall. Not even "The Slave Mother" is here, the best of that type. Missing from his collection are the Aunt Chloe poems, the high point of her poetic output, where the public voice is dropped for the more intimate folk voice. The introduction to this book is plebian, revealing a weak literary sensibility.
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