ipl-logo

Countee Cullen Poem Analysis

875 Words4 Pages

Countee Cullen was an African American writer who was famous for writing poems and writing a very popular novel. He had a very good education when he was growing up and attended very popular universities. He was writing poems in the Harlem Renaissance time period, which was the time of the African American great migration during the middle of the 1930s. Countee Cullen was born on May 20 although due to conflicting accounts of his early life it is still unknown. Cullen’s exact place of birth is known, but there are some sources that state that he could have been born in Louisville, Kentucky, Baltimore, and New York City. It is known if Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and reared by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his parental grandmother. Porter brought young Cullen to Harlem when he was nine; she ended up dying in 1918. No known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was taken in, or adopted, by Reverend and Mrs. Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The Reverend was the local minister, and founder, …show more content…

He has written “Thoughts in a Zoo” which depicts the life these African Americans had to live through while living through the Harlem Renaissance. The poem says on how they were treated like animals locked up in a cage. They didn’t have any rights and couldn’t live freely as they should have. Another poem the he wrote was “The Wise”, which is about how older people have the greatest knowledge and are very wise since they have been through a lot in their lives and know what to do and what not to do. Another one of his poems “Song in Spite of Myself” is him telling the reader not to love all at once, never live with all your mind, never love with all your soul which is telling you not to love something right away and to take time to love for who or what they are because if something goes wrong then it will hurt you the

Show More
Related
837 Words | 4 Pages

That is why see him in books at schools and in libraries. He even became a role model and a mentor to a troubled high school senior and turn him into one of famous novelist in our African-American culture that we know today. That is why we celebrate him in Black

Read More
690 Words | 3 Pages

He was a songwriter for a variety of Broadway shows. When he wanted a break from writing songs and music, he started to write poetry. He said that African Americans should write. They should tell their experiences. They should not be quiet, they should write and let people know what is really going on.

Read More
1263 Words | 6 Pages

Countee Cullen was one of the most famous figures of the Harlem Renaissance. He worked to be an author on romantic poetry. Cullen focused on topics like love and death. He also wrote many poems on racial issues. These poems raised him to his literary fame.

Read More
783 Words | 4 Pages

Born on February 1, 1902 and raised in New York City very own Harlem, Hughes would prove to be one of the most significant writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926 Hughes published one of his many symbolic poems Weary Blues. The Weary Blues is a poem that was able to fuse together poetry, jazz and blues which describes one of the distinctive characteristics of the “New Negro” of the Harlem Renaissance. The Weary Blues portrays the overcrowded conditions and employment difficulties blacks faced in Harlem. Those who suffered from ambiguity because of lack of monetary resources and basic luxuries:

Read More
500 Words | 2 Pages

Friendship is strong and can last a lifetime. In John Green's “Freak the Geek “a girl has Has problems in Hoover Prep School with older girls. She uses the power of friendship to get through tough times with her best friend. Lauren makes in through challenges and the struggles of Hoover Prep School with the power of friendship. This friendship leads to her being able to cope with the school and helps her build bravery at the same time.

Read More
616 Words | 3 Pages

While technical definitions of the word “paranoia” are about a mental disorder, it’s the only word that fully encompasses the fear, mistrust, and suspicion demonstrated by the film JFK. This kind of paranoia is generally a suspicion of conspiracy, which can be anything from exaggerated stories about Freemasons in America, to a belief that the government faked the Moon Landings, to thinking that the American government conspired to kill the president so our country could go to war. Many paranoid conspiracy theories don’t do much of anything besides hold back the people who believe in them, but others, like in JFK, can cause harm or injustice to those accused. However, in the movie, Oliver Stone puts this kind of paranoia in a positive light, as if saying that conspiracy theorists are righteous seekers of truth and justice. Paranoia is a major theme behind the movie JFK, and shows how far some people will go to prove a suspected conspiracy.

Read More
934 Words | 4 Pages

How would you feel if someone could control what you were thinking? In “The Feed” written by M.T Anderson, everyone living in the community had a feed in their brain that was controlled by one large organization. Violet, the main character, suffers through a malfunction in her feed that changes the way she sees her society. Most people’s opinions can be changed when they have experienced the benefits and the disadvantages of something. Since Violet is aware of how life is with and without the feed, she becomes hesitant to believing that her community is being run efficiently.

Read More
450 Words | 2 Pages

He was an African American man that had been born in Philadelphia, in 1986. He eventually went to Harvard and received degrees in both literature and philosophy. He was obviously a very intelligent man, and very talented in the subjects that he studied. Eventually, once the time of the Harlem Renaissance begun, he became very active in it, since he was a scholar in literature and philosophy, which was evolving during that time period. During that time period, he supported African American authors and writers, giving a significant amount of praise to Zora Neale

Read More
405 Words | 2 Pages

Hughes cast off the influences of white poets and and used blues and jazz to write his poems. Claude Mckay urged African Americans to stand up for their rights in his work. Jean Toomer wrote plays,short stories, and poems to capture the spirit of his times. Zora Neale Hurston was noticed quickly with her moving novel, “THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD”.

Read More
1148 Words | 5 Pages

Aside from his highly praised works such as “I, Too” and “The Weary Blues,” Hughes faced heavy criticism for his more in-depth poems. Surprisingly, the judgement came from fellow black writers. Hughes was already under the watchful eye of a few of these famed writers at the early age of twenty-four (“Langston Hughes”). What set him apart from other writers at his age, was that Hughes was in love with the good and bad sides of being black in America. Most black writers wanted to take the beauty of being black and magnify it.

Read More
1442 Words | 6 Pages

Rina Morooka Mr Valera Language Arts Compare and Contrast essay on “The poet’s obligation”, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”, and “In my craft of sullen art” The three poems, “The poet’s obligation” by Neruda, “when I have fears that I may cease to be” by Keats, and “In my craft of sullen art” by Thomas, all share the similarity that they describe poets’ relationships with their poems. However, the three speakers in the three poems shared different views on their poetry; the speaker in Neruda’s poem believes that his poems which were born out of him stored creativity to people who lead busy and tiring life, and are in need of creativity, while the speaker in Keats’ poem believes that his poems are like tools to write down what

Read More
1873 Words | 8 Pages

The Renaissance was a time when the voice of the African-American writer, scholar, author, poet and philosophers began to share the experience of African Americans to the world. These literary works became the history of black lives, which today has become much of the historical reference for that time. At the beginning, there was Charles Chestnutt, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes were writers that were part of “The Harlem Renaissance”. In all, there were 27 novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers.

Read More
1552 Words | 7 Pages

Biography/Context: Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is widely considered as one of the most successful African-American poets of all time. He was also a columnist, playwright, novelist, and social activist for African-American rights. Consequently, Hughes wrote all sorts of literature about 20th century African-Americans living in Harlem--a major black residential within the Manhattan borough of New York City--and soon became an extremely influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance, which was the rebirth movement of African-American culture in the arts during the 1920s. Hughes also had great admiration for music, and was inspired by a variety of genres/musicians such as boogie, Bach, jazz, and blues. His special love for blues music caused

Read More
1089 Words | 5 Pages

Langston Hughes was an American poem born in the early nineteen hundreds, who became known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He published many poems that brought light to the life of people of color in the twentieth century. There are three poems that the speakers are used to portray three major themes of each poem. Racism, the American Dream, and Hopes are all the major themes that Hughes uses to highlight the average life of a person of color. Theme for English B,” “Harlem,” and “Let America Be America Again” were three of Hughes’s poems that was selected to underline the themes.

Read More
911 Words | 4 Pages

Erin Hanson: Reassurance in Flaws The name Erin Hanson is one many have not heard. The young poets ideas spread confidence, self love, and acceptance. Her young age allows her to connect with her audience in ways many her fellow poets can not. For example in her poem non-officially titled “People are not poetry” Hanson covers the many struggles of being human.

Read More

More about Countee Cullen Poem Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document