Poetry
Color
Countee Cullen · 1925
Synopsis
A poem addressed to the reader, then four sections: Color, Epitaphs, For Love's Sake, Varia. An eight-year-old child, passing through Baltimore, smiles at a boy of his own age who sticks out his tongue at him and insults him. A poet who does not doubt God's goodness is nevertheless astonished by a design he does not understand. A long poem asks what Africa can possibly be to one who descends from it. Other pieces speak of brown girls, of an Atlantic City waiter, of Harlem wine, of love, and of the dead, in a series of epitaphs.
Context
The volume appears from Harper in 1925; its author is twenty-two and enters Harvard the same year. He admired Keats and preferred regular forms, when other poets of his generation sought their rhythm in jazz; he even urged Langston Hughes to keep jazz out of his verse. He refused to be called a Black poet, wanting to be read simply as a poet, a position that made him controversial. The book won him the Harmon Foundation gold medal.
Who it is for
A collection of mostly short pieces, in quatrains and couplets, alongside three long poems. No French translation in volume form.
Prizes and reception
The book made its author famous overnight, according to Mencken; the critics of 1925 welcomed it with favour, and it later became a landmark.
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