A Carnival Jangle

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson was an American poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; she then married physician Henry A. Callis; and last married Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist.

A carnival jangle is filled with common carnival excitement and mysteries. The imagery used by Alice Dunbar exemplifies beautiful scenery, which eventually leads into a "who killed her" mystery. She sets up a beautifully written scene of deception. She uses the captivation of nature and joyous people to draw the optimistic and fruitful troubadour, Flo, to the masked world of what Dunbar calls "Life." Unfortunately, for Flo her experience of life is different from what she may have expected because ...How will the story end? Read the story to find out.