Countee Cullen

Born in New York, poet Countee Cullen was one of the major contributors to the 1920s literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Through his verse, Cullen gave expression to the character of African-American life as he experienced it.

The Harlem Renaissance, a period of great achievement in African-American art and literature, was pushed to a new high with the 1925 publication of Cullen's volume of poems entitled Color. His sensuous lyric verse expressed themes in the life of his race and shed light on social reality.

Cullen's other verse collections include: Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) and The Black Christ (1929). His novel, One Way to Heaven, appeared in 1932. Cullen was awarded the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Prize from New York University.

From the Dark Tower Heritage

We shall not always plant while others reap The golden increment of bursting fruit, What is Africa to me: Not always countenance, abject and mute, Copper sun or scarlet sea, That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap; Jungle star or jungle track, Not everlastingly while others sleep Strong bronzed men, or regal black Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, Women from whose loins I sprang Not always bend to some more subtle brute; When the birds of Eden sang? We were not made to eternally weep. One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, White stars is no less lovely being dark, What is Africa to me? And there are buds that cannot bloom at all In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall; So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.