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Books by Countee Cullen
Color
(1925) /
Copper Sun
(1927) /
Caroling Dusk
(1927) /
The
Black Christ (1929) /
My Soul's High Song (Anchor, 1990)
Houston
Baker,
Many-Colored Coat of Dreams: The Poetry of Countee Cullen.
Broadside Press, 1974
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Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
Harlem Renaissance Poet
Countee Cullen was born in New York city in 1903,
the son of the Rev. R. A. Cullen, minister and founder of Salem M.E. Church. He was educated in New York public schools, being
graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1922, and he
received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from New York University
in June 1925 after being elected to Phi Beta Kappa. he entered
Harvard University in the fall of 1925 and received his A.M. in
English literature in 1926.
Cullen began to write when he was fourteen years old.
A
teacher in DeWitt Clinton High School gave an assignment to his
class to write some verse and Cullen handed in "To A
Swimmer" (the only free verse poem he has ever done). He
thought no more of writing until a year later when he saw this
poem published in The Modern School Magazine issue of May
1918. Cullen then became ambitious to write and his first verse
appeared in
The Crisis, official magazine of the
National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]. While
still in high school he was awarded first prize in a contest by
the Federation of women's Clubs with his poem, "I Have a
Rendezvous With Life."
When Cullen began to write, he was a great admirer of
Tennyson. Later he was influenced by
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
A.E. Housman,
[Edwin
Arlington]
Robinson, and, most of all,
Keats. He is essentially an
emotional and lyrical poet. His only present tendency towards
free verse is limited to experimental attempts and he finds
himself more and more inclined towards rigid forms.
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"Most things I write," he says, "I do for the
sheer love of the music in them. A number of times I have said I
wanted to be a poet and known as such and not as a Negro poet.
Some how or other, however, I find my poetry of itself treating
of the Negro, of his joys and his sorrows--mostly of the
latter--and of the heights and depths of emotion which I feel as
a Negro."
Cullen has published:
Color (1925),
Copper Sun
(1927),
Caroling Dusk, a comprehensive anthology of Negro
verse (1927), The
Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), and
The
Black Christ (1929). |
Source: Dilly Tante,
ed. Living Authors: A Book of Biographies. New York: The
H. W. Wilson Company, 1932
posted 9 November 2007 * * * *
*
|
Yet Do I Marvel
By Countee Cullen I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind.
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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* * * *
* Excerpts from
"Forward" of
Caroling
Dusk
By Countee Cullen The poet writes out of his experience, whether it
be personal or vicarious, and as these experiences differ among
other poets, so do they differ among Negro poets; for the double
obligation of being both Negro and American is not so unified as
we are often led to believe. A survey of the work of Negro poets
will show that the individual diversifying ego transcends the
synthesizing hue. From the roots of varied experiences have
flowered the dialect of
Dunbar, the recent sermon poems of
James
Weldon Johnson, and some of
Helene Johnson's more colloquial
verses, which, differing essentially only in a few expressions
peculiar to Negro slang, are worthy counterparts of verses done
by John V. A. Weaver "in American."
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Attempt to hedge all these in with a name, and your
imagination must deny the facts.
Langston Hughes, poetizing the
blues in his zeal to represent the Negro masses, and
Sterling
Brown, combining a similar interest in such poems as "Long
Gone" and "The Odyssey of Big Boy" with a
capacity for turning a neat sonnet according to the rules,
represent differences as unique as those between
Burns and
Whitman.
Jessie Fauset with Cornell University and training at
the Sorbonne as her intellectual equipment surely justifies the
very subjects and forms of her poems: "Touché,"
"La Vie C'est la Vie," "Noblesse Oblige,"
etc.; while Lewis
[Grandison] Alexander, with no known degree from the
University of Tokyo, is equally within the province of his
creative prerogatives in composing Japanese
hokkus and
tankas.
Although
Anne Spencer lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, and
in her biographical note recognizes the Negro as the
great American taboo, I have seen but two poems by
her which are even remotely concerned with this
subject; rather does she write with a cool precision
that calls forth comparison with
Amy Lowell and the influence of a rock-bound
seacoast. |
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And Lula Lowe Weeden, the
youngest poet in the volume, living in the same Southern city,
is too young to realize that she is colored in an environment
calculated to impress her daily with the knowledge of this
pigmentary anomaly.
There are lights and shades of difference even in their
methods of decrying race injustices, where these peculiar
experiences of Negro life cannot be overlooked.
Claude McKay is
most exercised, rebellious, and vituperative to a degree that
clouds his lyricism in many instances, but silhouettes most
forcibly his high dudgeon; while neither
Arna Bontemps, at all
times cool, calm, and intensely religious, nor
Georgia Douglas
Johnson, in many instances bearing up bravely under comparison
with Sara Teasdale, takes advantage of the numerous
opportunities offered them for rhymed polemics.
If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to
state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are
concerned is in the decline. Added to the fact that these poets
are out of contact with this fast-dying medium, certain
sociological considerations and the natural limitations of
dialect for poetic expression militate against its use even as a
tour de force. In a day when artificiality is so
vigorously condemned, the Negro poet would be foolish indeed to
turn to dialect. The majority of present-day poems in dialect
are the efforts of white poets. . . . * * * *
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Heritage
By Countee Cullen
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky.
So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air.
So I lie, whose fount of pride,
Dear distress, and joy allied,
Is my somber flesh and skin,
With the dark blood dammed within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
Channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and foam and fret.
Africa?A
book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see;
What's your nakedness to me?
Here no leprous flowers rear
Fierce corollas in the air;
Here no bodies sleek and wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of
Jungle boys and girls in love.
What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything?The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,
Even what shy bird with mute
Wonder at her travail there,
Meekly labored in its hair.
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his
fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
So I lie, who find no peace
Night or day, no slight release
From the unremittent beat
Made by cruel padded feet
Walking through my body's street.
Up and down they go, and back,
Treading out a jungle track.
So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night--
I can never rest at all
When the rain begins to fall;
Like a soul gone mad with pain
I must match its weird refrain;
Ever must I twist and squirm,
Writhing like a baited worm,
While its primal measures drip
Through my body, crying, "Strip!
Doff this new exuberance.
Come and dance the Lover's Dance!"
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day.
Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,
Clay, and brittle bits of stone,
In a likeness like their own,
My conversion came high-priced;
I belong to Jesus Christ,
Preacher of humility;
Heathen gods are naught to me.
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
So I make an idle boast;
Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak
With my mouth thus, in my heart
Do I play a double part.
Ever at Thy glowing altar
Must my heart grow sick and falter,
Wishing He I served were black,
Thinking then it would not lack
Precedent of pain to guide it,
Let who would or might deride it;
Surely then this flesh would know
Yours had borne a kindred woe.
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features where,
Crowned with dark rebellious hair,
Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, while touches
Quick and hot, of anger, rise
To smitten cheek and weary eyes.
Lord, forgive me if my need
Sometimes shapes a human creed.
All day long and all night through,
One thing only must I do:
Quench my pride and cool my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood.
Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I thought was wet
Burning like the dryest flax,
Melting like the merest wax,
Lest the grave restore its dead.
Not yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized. |
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Countee Cullen
(1903–1946), poet, anthologist, novelist, translator, children's
writer, and playwright. Countee Cullen is something of a
mysterious figure. He was born 30 March 1903, but it has been
difficult for scholars to place exactly where he was born, with
whom he spent the very earliest years of his childhood, and
where he spent them. New York City and Baltimore have been given
as birthplaces. Cullen himself, on his college transcript at New
York University, lists Louisville, Kentucky, as his place of
birth. A few years later, when he had achieved considerable
literary fame during the era known as the New Negro or Harlem
Renaissance he was to assert that his birthplace was New York
City, which he continued to claim for the rest of his life.
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Cullen's second wife, Ida, and
some of his closest friends, including Langston
Hughes and Harold Jack-man, said that Cullen was
born in Louisville. As James Weldon Johnson wrote of
Cullen in The Book of American Negro Poetry (rev.
ed., 1931): “There is not much to say about these
earlier years of Cullen—unless he himself should say
it”. And Cullen—revealing a temperament that was not
exactly secretive but private, less a matter of
modesty than a tendency toward being encoded and
tactful—never in his life said anything more
clarifying.
n 1927 Cullen published
Caroling Dusk, an anthology of 38 black poets
from Paul Lawrence Dunbar to 18-year-old Lula Lowe
Weeden. In committing himself to the elevation of
African-American art, Cullen stated in the book's
introduction that, "I have called this collection an
anthology of verse by Negro poets rather than an
anthology of Negro verse." In an effort to promote
the universal consciousness in the art of the black
poet, Cullen added that, "As heretical as it may
sound, there is the probability that Negro poets,
dependent as they are on the English language, may
have more to gain from the rich background of
English and American poetry than from any nebulous
atavistic yearnings towards an African inheritance."
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The year 1927 also saw the
publication of Cullen's Copper Sun and Ballad of a
Brown Girl. Although Copper Sun won the general
approval of critics, many agreed that it lacked the intensity of
Color.
Cullen dedicated Copper
Sun to Yolande Du Bois, daughter of famous National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
founder and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois. Introduced to Yolande in
the summer of 1923, Cullen's courtship greatly pleased her
father. But despite her prestigious social position, Yolande
was, according to historian David Levering Lewis, "a kind" yet
"plain woman of modest intellectual endowment," who, as it was
well known among Harlem circles, was infatuated with jazz band
leader Jimmie Lunceford. Nevertheless, Yolande and Cullen were
married by Reverend Cullen on April 9, 1928, in the Salem
Methodist Church. The ceremony became a grand showing of
African-American wealth and talent from around the country.
Among the ushers were the famous black poets Arna Bontemps and
Langston Hughes.
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[Countee]
Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of
1928 enabled him to study and write
abroad. He married in April 1928 Nina
Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W. E. B.
DuBois, the leading black intellectual.
At that time Yolande was involved
romantically with a popular band leader.
Between the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen
travelled back and forth between France
and the United States. By 1929 Cullen
had published four volumes of poetry.
The title poem of
The
Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) was criticized for
the use of Christian religious
imagery—Cullen compared the lynching of
a black man to Christ's crucifixion.
Cullen married Yolanda Du Bois in 1928.
The marriage was the social event of the
decade, but the marriage did not fair
well, and he divorced in 1930. It is
widely said that Cullen was a
homosexual, and his relationship with
Harold Jackman's was a significant
factor in the divorce. Jackman was a a
teacher whom the writer Carl Van Vechten
had used as model in his novel
Nigger Heaven (1926). In 1940
Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson; they
had known each other for ten years.—Wikipedia
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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The Price of Civilization
Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
By
Jeffrey D. Sachs
The Price of Civilization is a book
that is essential reading for every
American. In a forceful, impassioned, and
personal voice, he offers not only a searing
and incisive diagnosis of our country’s
economic ills but also an urgent call for
Americans to restore the virtues of
fairness, honesty, and foresight as the
foundations of national prosperity. Sachs
finds that both political parties—and many
leading economists—have missed the big
picture, offering shortsighted solutions
such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to
address complex economic problems that
require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that
we have profoundly underestimated
globalization’s long-term effects on our
country, which create deep and largely unmet
challenges with regard to jobs, incomes,
poverty, and the environment. America’s
single biggest economic failure, Sachs
argues, is its inability to come to grips
with the new global economic realities.
Sachs describes a political system that has
lost its ethical moorings, in which
ever-rising campaign contributions and
lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the
citizenry. . . . Sachs offers a plan to turn
the crisis around. He argues persuasively
that the problem is not America’s abiding
values, which remain generous and pragmatic,
but the ease with which political spin and
consumerism run circles around those values.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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