SOURCE: "I Do Not Marvel, Countee Cullen," in Modern Black Poets, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1973, pp. 69-83.

In the following excerpt, Collier cites Cullen's "From the Dark Tower" as a poem that expresses "the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance."

Literary historians and critics have a way of saying that the Negro poet faces a dilemma: Should he write as a Negro, or should he write as an American? They seem to mean, should he write poetry of social protest, or is he free to write of love and nature and God? I am convinced that this dilemma is only a straw man, created by the critics themselves.

Of course, Negro poets write of other subjects than social protest. Of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the fiery McKay wrote gentle lyrics of love, and tender poems of his childhood in Jamaica. Countee Cullen's delicate sonnets of love and life are...