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Mystery Man

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Mystery Man
Born in 1903, African-American poet, Countee Cullen,
is remembered as "the poet laureate of the Harlem
Renaissance" (Price). He began writing poetry as a
young child, with his career taking off soon after
(Price). Following his attendance at Dewitt Clinton High
School and then New York University, he published his
first complete anthology, Color, in 1925 (Lawlor;
Shields). After receiving the Harmon Gold Award for
Literature in 1926, he earned a Master's degree from
Harvard University the same year (Lawlor). Cullen
married Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du
Bois, in 1928, divorcing two years later (Price).
However, their marriage marked the social event of
the year for the African-American community of
Harlem, New York because of the significance of both
the Du Bois and Cullen families in the Civil Rights
Movement (Price). In the midst of his busy life, Cullen
gained a lot of success through writing poetry and
other literature.
Though only for a short time, Cullen's compelling
poetry and activism in the Civil Rights Movement led
him to achieve an immense amount of attention and
fame. His career is known to be short, but one of the
most successful of the Harlem Renaissance:
the eccentric phenomenon of the Roaring Twenties
resulting froma fascination with
black culture by white bohemians and a calculation by
officials [of] civil rights
organizationsthat the display of artistic
accomplishment would elevate the standing of
the race. ("The Too-Brief Career")
Countee Cullen's captivating poetry took its shape as a
result of the unique experiences he had throughout

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his life, including his mysterious childhood, his natural

determination to achieve racial equality, and the
influence of specific individuals around him.
The poet's childhood is virtually a mystery to
everyone but himself. Langston Hughes, along with
some of his other close friends, say that Cullen keeps
this secrecy for a valid reason though there is little
knowledge about what that specific 1 reason may be
(Beetz). Throughout his life, Cullen did not discuss his
birth, biological parents, or even who raised him
during his young life. There are speculations as to
Cullen's birthplace including, Louisville, Kentucky;
Baltimore, Maryland; and New York, New York based
on what the poet has expressed publically (Lawlor).
However, there is no confirmed information
concerning the years before his adoption by Reverend
Frederick Asbury Cullen in his early teens (Beetz). The
poet has stated that the Cullens are his birth parents,
rather than his adoptive ones, showing how desperate
he was to rid himself of what was most likely a
traumatic experience during his childhood.
Though unknown, there is something from Cullen's
childhood that strongly influenced his writing
throughout his career, as exemplified in his poem,
"Saturday's Child." Throughout this piece, the speaker
creates a comparison between their personal
upbringing and to that of a child born into a wealthy
family in 2 the same time. He writes, "some are
swaddled 3 in silk and downThey swathed 4 my limbs
in a sackcloth 5 gown" (Cullen 5,7) Early in the poem,
there is a clear image of the impoverished life that the
speaker was born into, and as the poem continues,
the speaker describes this unfortunate lifestyle. Cullen
makes an explicit reference to the poverty and pain
that he suffered, writing, "Dame Poverty gave me my

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name, /And Pain godfathered 6 me" (11-12). These

references to pain and poverty suggest that Cullen did
not live a normal childhood, but one filled with an
amount of sorrow and grief that he could not endure
to discuss during his adult life. This influence gave
Cullen's writing a distinct mystery with the alwaysunderlying tone of despair and heartache 7 from his
past.
Cullen had a unique ambition to overcome the racial
boundaries of literature and wanted to be considered
an American poet, in comparison to an AfricanAmerican poet (Price). He "relied on more classical
and romantic models" of poetry throughout his
career, staying away from the "jazz, blues, [and] more
modern free-verse style[s]" of poetry that many
African-American poets were writing during the
Harlem Renaissance (Gregersen). Numerous poems in
Cullen's collections are centered around the theme of
race and particularly, racial equality, such as in
"Tableau." This poem 8 creates an image of a white boy
and an African-American boy walking down the road
together with the people of society, blacks and whites
alike, looking at them in disgust and confusion. Cullen
expresses his strong belief that all races should exist
in harmony by writing, "That lightning brilliant as a
sword/ Should blaze the path of thunder" (11-12).
These lines are meant to exemplify how the
relationship that should exist between races is
inevitable, much like the relationship that exists
between thunder and lighting. William T. Lawlor writes
that Cullen was unique in his fervent 9 efforts to
achieve this racial harmony he dreamed of, and by the
end of his career was well-known and respected in
both the black and white communities alike
("Counte Cullen"). Not only was Cullen motivated by

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his personal ideas about society and literature, but

also by those people closest to him.
Cullen was influenced by specific 10 people that he
looked up to, or who simply 11 gave him a constant
reason to put in more effort and hard work to be the
best. Langston Hughes served as Countee's closest
friend, but also his biggest rival throughout his career
("The Too-Brief Career"). The two poets, as opposite as
they were in style, topic, and tone of their poetry,
were constantly 12 striving to be better than the other
during each of their careers, and though Hughes is
now considered the "winner," he was one of the major
reasons for Cullen's strong desire to do well ("The
Too-Brief Career"). He served as a sort of motivation
that was never-ending and gave Cullen a lot of his
passion. Furthermore, Cullen looked to others that
served as mentors and played key roles in fully
developing his potential as a poet in the Harlem
Renaissance.
John Keats was prominent in Countee Cullen's writing
career since Cullen discovered him in high school and
quickly fell in love with the style and techniques of
Keats' poetry (Gregerson). He told Arna Bontemps
"that John Keats was his god,'" and celebrates him in
more than one of his poems (Gregerson). He wrote
one of his earlier works, "I Have a Rendezvous With
Life," based on Keats' "I Have a Rendezvous With
Death" (Shields). In the poem, he follows the structure,
style, and technique of Keats' version, expressing his
gratitude for life and living it to the fullest. Mr. Cullen
is now considered a traditional poet with clear

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influences of not only John Keats, but other romantic

poets of his time (Lawlor). The primary reason behind
Cullen's bold choice of writing more traditionally
instead of swaying towards the jazz and blues styles

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comes from his great admiration of John Keats.

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Another significant figure that affected Cullen's works

is Reverend Cullen, Countee's adoptive father and
renowned pastor in Harlem, New York. Growing up
with deep Methodist ideals instilled upon him, Cullen
was always a religious man and "never discarded his
belief in Christianity" despite his periods of self-doubt
(Shields). His works contain small, yet powerful, hints
of this religious side, as shown in, "Simon the
Cyrenian Speaks." Cullen writes, "I will not bear/ His
cross upon my back;/He only seeks to place it there/
Because my skin is black" (Poem Hunter). In this
instance, he has combined his religious beliefs with his
beliefs on racial equality and is showing how he never
left the Lord because of the hardships he faced as an
African-American. This loyalty to his faith is prevalent
because of the influence of his adoptive father,
Reverend Cullen.
Countee Cullen's short career is said to have come
from his too heavy reliance on "white literary
predecessors" and his lack of establishing his own
culture in his work (Lawlor). His rigid beliefs about
racial equality forced his work to conform to that of
white writers during the Harlem Renaissance and
caused this lack of cultural elements. Ironically, in the
midst of "trying to prove themselves equal, [AfricanAmerican poets of the Harlem Renaissance] rendered
themselves secondary" because they did not allow
themselves to be open to how their race could have
simply amplified the traditional writing they enjoyed
("The Too-Brief"). This all being true, others say that
Cullen somewhat "dried up" in the late 1930s,
struggling to produce more work with his involvement
in writing theater, a novel, and children's books
ending in disappointment ("The Too-Brief). Thus,

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Cullen spent the last years of his life teaching at

Frederick Douglass Junior High School until he died of
uremic poisoning in 1946, at the age of 43. Countee
Cullen left behind a positive legacy, as he is now one of
the most honored and praised poets from the Harlem
Renaissance ("The Too-Brief"; Price).

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