Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2: Contemporary Poetry
Another poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Melvin Tolson called Countee Cullen (nee Countee LeRoy Porter) and Langston Hughes (my post on him here) “antipodes” of that movement: “The former is a classicist and conservative; the latter, an experimentalist and radical”. The Harlem Renaissance was a diverse movement, it produced unique artists, and while they sometimes are grouped under the same heading, you would never read a Countee Cullen poem and mistake it for a Melvin Tolson poem, or a Langston Hughes poem.
Hughes took as his inspiration for his verse American forms, mainly black American forms: blues, jazz, spirituals. He was criticized for this at the time, mainly by other black writers and black columnists, who naturally had a vested interest in how they were being portrayed to the white world. Countee Cullen used strictly European forms. Old forms. Sonnets, ballads, he used rhyme schemes from the Elizabethans. (He wrote a poem to John Keats, a clear statement of his sense of his own tradition). He was ALSO criticized for this (you couldn’t win, apparently). But he remained firm. He had a working philosophy, and felt strongly about why he did what he did. He called out to other Negro writers to do the same:
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 toward an African inheritance.
Provocative stuff, even more so today. His views, stated there, are probably the main reason that Cullen is not more anthologized today, because the politically-correct police nitwits are always on the prowl for “right” attitudes, and Cullen definitely does not display the “right” attitude. (Cullen says in one poem, “What is Africa to me?”).
He wanted to wrap himself in tradition, the long tradition of European culture, he felt that that was his true inheritance. He felt European culture was superior to anything else. He was called a traitor for that. I am sure he still is. Ridiculous, stupid, because his poems are WONDERFUL.
However, his topics are that of a black man, living in America in the early years of the 20th century. He could not remove that context, because it was who he was. It was what he knew. It is that reason that some of his poems are so startling. Elegiac, formal, highly structured, with sometimes archaic language – but handling the subjects of racism and prejudice and oppression. It’s great stuff. Heartbreaking. He has one poem about a waiter in Atlantic City (which, sadly, I have been unable to find online – although it is included in the Norton Anthology) that is sweeping in scope, devastating in its details, and manages, in four stanzas, to articulate the sadness of a man held down by circumstances, racism, bigotry. (“For him to be humble who is proud / Needs colder artifice”) – Damn, that is some good stuff.
Countee Cullen did not live long. He was born in 1903, died in 1946, but in his short life he accomplished a great deal. He married the daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, but she left him a couple months later. He was probably gay. He published a ton. The man must never have stopped working. He got a Guggenheim Fellowship, he spent a year in Paris, he published 5 books of poetry, a novel – he translated Euripedes’ Medea, and was a major figure at the time. His star fell in the coming years, due to his “incorrect” attitudes.
Here is a poem I read of his, again, while I was out on Block Island, and it has a perfection of rhythm that reminds me of Longfellow. And it packs a huge punch. There’s a child-like quality to it, he “makes a point”, but without even saying what the point is – he doesn’t need to. It’s a powerful poem.
Incident
Once riding in Old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger”.
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
