In 1922, Cullen entered New York University and
began his career as a published poet. In 1923 and
1924, respectively, he won second prize and first
honorable mention in the national Witter Bynner
Poetry Contest for his “Ballad of the Brown Girl”
and “Spirit Birth.” During this period, Cullen’s
poems appeared in many periodicals, including
OPPORTUNITY, CRISIS, Bookman, Poetry, Harper’s,
and The Nation. In 1925 he won the Witter Bynner
contest, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from NYU, and
enrolled in Harvard University. In the same year,
Cullen’s first collection of poetry, Color, appeared
and was critically acclaimed primarily for its poi-
gnant and sincere treatment of racial themes. One
of the most famous poems of the volume, “Yet Do
I Marvel,” ends with a couplet that quickly became
one of the most quoted in the English language:
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / To make a
poet black, and bid him sing!”
After graduating from Harvard in 1926, Cullen
began to write the column “The Dark Tower” for
Opportunity, and he soon became the magazine’s
assistant editor. In 1927 Cullen published Caroling
Dusk, an important anthology of African-Ameri-
can poets ranging from PAU L LAURENCE DUNBAR to
the then 18-year-old Lula Lowe Weeden. This year
also saw the publication of Cullen’s Copper Sun
and Ballad of the Brown Girl. Though generally
well received, many critics agreed that these works
did not match the quality of Color. In April 1928,
Cullen married Yolande, his longtime sweetheart
and the daughter of the prominent writer and
activist W. E. B. DUBOIS. Soon after the wedding,
Cullen traveled to France on a Guggenheim Fel-
lowship. Here, Cullen wrote and studied French
literature at the Sorbonne. When Yolande joined
him in Paris in July 1928, the couple decided to
end the relationship. Cullen stayed in France and
completed his The Black Christ and Other Poems.
Published in 1930, The Black Christ was not well
received by the critical community. Reviewers ar-
gued that Cullen’s later work lacked the intensity
of his earlier volumes.
Cullen returned to the United States and di-
vorced his wife in 1930. He soon set out to write
the novel One Way to Heaven, a satirical work pub-
lished in 1932. Offered a professorial position at
Dillard University in New Orleans in 1934, Cul-
len declined the position and accepted a job as a
French teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High
School. Though he continued to write and give
lectures, Cullen’s only major work over the next
decade include the book of poetry The Medea, and
Some Poems, the children’s books The Lost Zoo and
My Lives and How I Lost Them, and the posthu-
mous On These I Stand. Cullen married Ida Mae
Roberson in 1940 and died of uremic poisoning
in 1946.
Sometimes called (along with LANGSTON
HUGHES) the “poet laureate” of the HARLEM RE-
NAISSANCE, Countee Cullen differed from such
African-American contemporaries as Hughes and
JEAN TOOMER in that he did not turn to jazz, BLUES,
or a more modern free-verse style in his poetry.
He relied on more classical and romantic models
throughout his life, but, like Toomer, he fervently
rejected the title “Negro” or “Black” poet and
wished to be known only as an “American” poet.
As such, he stated in his foreword to Caroling Dusk
that “the attempt to corral the outbursts of the
ebony muse into some definite mold to which all
poetry by Negroes will conform seems altogether
futile and aside from the facts.” Though his career
as a poet had long since faded by the 1940s, Cullen
remains an important figure in African-American
literature.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bontemps, Arna Wendell, ed. The Harlem Renais-
sance Remembered. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1972.
Early, Gerald, ed. My Soul’s High Song: The Collected
Writings of Countee Cullen. New York: Anchor
Books, 1991.
Ferguson, Blanche E. Countee Cullen and the Negro
Renaissance. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1966.
Turner, Darwin T. In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-
American Writers and Their Search for Identity.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1971.Jeremy GregersenCullen, Countee 127