SOURCE: "Race Consciousness in Countee Cullen's Poetry," in Susquehanna University Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, June, 1963, pp. 65-82.

In the following excerpt, Reimherr argues that race is thematically central to Cullen's poetry.

The theme of race consciousness is one of several themes that run through the poetry of Countee Cullen. Nature, classical mythology, love, death, religion, the animals that failed to reach Noah's ark, even cats, captured his pen. Although Cullen stoutly defended his right to deal with any subject that interested him, James Weldon Johnson felt that the best of Cullen's poetry was motivated by race….

In Cullen's poetry, the themes of love and religion hold a place of equal importance with the theme of race consciousness. Cullen was essentially a lyric poet; however, an awareness of color and the difference it made in America influenced his early poetry and ran as an undercurrent of frustration and depression in...