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Countee Cullen was a significant figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of extraordinary artistic and intellectual flourishing among Black Americans in the 1920s and 1930s. He is primarily known for his poetry, which often explores themes of race, identity, love, and faith.
- Synopsis
- Education
- Philosophy
- Controversy
- Themes
- Analysis
- Background
- Criticism
- Writing
- Later years
- Legacy
- Assessment
Countee Cullen is one of the most representative voices of the Harlem Renaissance. His life story is essentially a tale of youthful exuberance and talent of a star that flashed across the African American firmament and then sank toward the horizon. When his paternal grandmother and guardian died in 1918, the 15-year-old Countee LeRoy Porter was tak...
While Cullens informal education was shaped by his exposure to black ideas and yearnings, his formal education derived from almost totally white influences. This dichotomy heavily influenced his creative work and his criticism, particularly because he did extremely well at the white-dominated institutions he attended and won the approbation of whit...
Because of Cullens success in both black and white cultures, and because of his romantic temperament, he formulated an aesthetic that embraced both cultures. He came to believe that art transcended race and that it could be used as a vehicle to minimize the distance between black and white peoples. When he chose as his models poet John Keats and to...
A paradox exists, however, between Cullens philosophy and writing. While he argued that racial poetry was a detriment to the color-blindness he craved, he was at the same time so affronted by the racial injustice in America that his own best verseindeed most of his versegave voice to racial protest. In fact the title of Cullens collection, Color (1...
Of the six identifiable racial themes in Cullens poetry, the first is Négritude, a pervasive international black literary movement, which included what scholar Arthur P. Davis in a 1953 Phylon essay called the alien-and-exile theme. Specific examples of this motif in Cullens poetry include his attribution of descent from African kings to the girl f...
Using a sixth motif, Cullen exhibits a direct expression of irrepressible anger at racial unfairness. His outcry is more muted than that of some other Harlem Renaissance poetsHughes, for example, and Claude McKaybut that is a matter of Cullens innate and learned gentility. Those who overlook Cullens strong indictment of racism in American society m...
After 1929 Cullens production of verse dropped off dramatically. It was limited to his translation of Euripides play Medea, which appeared along with some new poems in his collection The Medea, and Some Poems (1935) and later with half a dozen previously unpublished pieces that were included in his posthumously published collection, On These I Stan...
While his supporters continued to defend him on racial rather than literary grounds, his detractors gradually increased in numbers with the publication of each successive collection of his poetry. Harry Alan Potamkin, in a 1927 New Republic review of Copper Sun, found that Cullen had not really progressed since Color and that the poet had capitaliz...
For a combination of causes, then, beginning in the early 1930s Cullen largely curtailed his poetic output and channeled his creative energy into other genres. He wrote a novel, One Way to Heaven (1932), but its poor critical reception made it his only novel. The book reveals a flair for satire in its secondary plot, which centers around the Harlem...
Toward the end of his life, in the 1940s, Cullen was relatively successful as a dramatist. With another collaborator, Owen Dodson, he worked on several projects, including The Third Fourth of July, a one-act play printed in Theatre Arts in August, 1946. During this period Cullen rejected a professorship at Fisk University and instead remained in Ne...
But as Cullen argued, the play really deals with human virtueshonor, love, decency, and loyalty. The controversy rounding it wore on, however, until 1946. In March of that year, St. Louis Woman finally premiered on Broadway, featuring songs by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen such as Come Rain, Come Shine and making singer Pearl Bailey a star. Unfort...
The limitations of Cullens poetry such as its archaic and imitative ring, its occasional verbosity, and its tendency to sacrifice sense for conventional prosody restricted his literary status to that of a minor poet with a real lyrical gift. But he was not guilty of the obsequious acceptance of white values for which 1960s black power poets such as...
- Any Human to Another. In Countee Cullen’s poem, ‘Any Human to Another,’ the speaker describes how essential human interaction is. He also reveals how one person suffering affects everyone.
- Atlantic City Waiter. ‘Atlantic City Waiter’ by Countee Cullen is a deeply thoughtful poem. In it, Cullen describes the actions, strength, and pride of an Atlantic City waiter.
- From the Dark Tower. ‘From the Dark Tower’ by Countee Cullen is a thoughtful poem about the Black experience. It suggests that there is a brighter future on the horizon.
- Incident. ‘Incident’ by Countee Cullen describes a terrible incident from the poet’s youth that occurred when he was happily visiting Baltimore. Once riding in old Baltimore,
Countee Cullen. Countee Cullen was born Countee LeRoy Porter on May 30, 1903, likely in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York City and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen. When he was fifteen, he was unofficially adopted by F. A. Cullen, the minister of a Methodist church in Harlem.
Countee Cullen (born Countee LeRoy Porter; May 30, 1903 – January 9, 1946) was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance. [1]
Countee Cullen, probably born May 30, 1903, in Louisville (Kentucky) or New York, or even Baltimore (Maryland), sources diverge, and died in New York on January 9, 1946, was an African-American poet and writer. In 1922, he was admitted to New York University from where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1925. He continued his studies at Harvard University where, in 1926, he successfully ...
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Countee Cullen was an American poet, one of the finest of the Harlem Renaissance. Reared by a woman who was probably his paternal grandmother, Countee at age 15 was unofficially adopted by the Reverend F.A. Cullen, minister of Salem M.E. Church, one of Harlem’s largest congregations.
