text: The voice of one of this poet's speakers "falls dead a foot from [his] own lips" as he cries out to a vessel.
full_question: The voice of one of this poet's speakers "falls dead a foot from [his] own lips" as he cries out to a vessel. The speaker of that poem looks "far out into the pregnant night," where he can "hear a solemn booming gun," and the poem begins by noting how "out in the sky the dark clouds are massing" and ends each stanza with the repeated words, "passing, passing." The line "G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy" from this poet's "When Malindy Sings" exemplifies his use of dialect in poems he classified as "minors" to contrast with the normal-language "majors" in one collection. Another poem by this man invites the world to "dream otherwise" while the speakers resort to an object that "hides our cheeks and shades our eyes" and "grins and lies." For 10 points, name this African American poet of "Ships That Pass in the Night," "We Wear the Mask" and "Sympathy," which claims, "I know why the caged bird sings."
first_sentence: The voice of one of this poet's speakers "falls dead a foot from [his] own lips" as he cries out to a vessel.
raw_answer: Paul Laurence Dunbar