Countee Cullen, whose real surname was Porter, was born May 30, 1903. Nothing is known about where he was born, and little is known of his parents. An orphan in New York City, he was adopted by the Reverend Frederick A. and Mrs. Carolyn Cullen, whose name he took.
Following graduation from DeWitt Clinton High School, where he won a high school poetry contest, he attended New York University. In 1925 he took a baccalaureate degree. He also earned a master's degree at Harvard.
In 1925 his first book of poems, Color, was published. His metrical skill reminded many readers of the English poet Algernon Swinburne. He became assistant editor of Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life, which printed the fugitive pieces of African American writers and gave publicity to the African American artists who contributed so much to the cultural awakening of the 1920. Cullen knew what was going on in African American life, but he was not deeply involved. Ballad of the Brown Girl and Copper Sun, both published in 1927, contain mostly personal Keatsian lyrics, which, generally speaking, show no advance and no development from the poems in his first volume. The piece entitled "Heritage" is a noteworthy exception. In a critical preface to the collection of African American poetry, Caroling Dusk (1927), which he edited, Cullen argues that "Negro poetry . .. must emanate from some country other than this in some language other than our own. "Though he later claimed that his poetry "treated of the heights and depths of emotion which I feel as a Negro, " he did not want to be known as an African American poet. Even after his marriage, Cullen stayed aloof from action and affirmative argument about race. In France he completed the long, narrative, parabolic poem "The Black Christ, " which became the title poem of his fourth volume. The Medea and Some Poems (1935) was his last book of verse. From 1934 to 1945 he taught French in a New York public school. Cullen's poetry is traditional in structure. His output in prose suffers from an absence of genuine commitment and is undistinguished. His novel, One Way to Heaven, satirizes upper-class African American life. The Lost Zoo and My Nine Lives and How I Lost Them are children's books. Cullen collaborated on a musical play, St. Louis Woman (1946), but whatever emotional power and integrity it had was supplied by Arna Bontemps. The play opened on March 31, 1949. Cullen had died earlier, on January 9, 1946. On These I Stand, his own selection of his best poems, was published in 1947.
Quotations:
“There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks. ”
“The truth is. .. everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. ”
“I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage. ”
“The key to all strange things is in thy heart. .. ./ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas. ”
“My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me. ”
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”
“All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood. ”
“Dame Poverty gave me my name, And Pain godfathered me. ”
“What is last year's snow to me, Last year's anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set”
In 1928 Cullen married to Yolande, the only daughter of the African American radical and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. His marriage lasted only through the first year of a 2-year visit to France. After that he married Ida Cullen (Robertson).
