SOURCE: "Countee Cullen at The Heights,'" in The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989, pp. 101-37.

In the following excerpt. Tuttleton attempts to demonstrate that Cullen's college experience was a source of considerable influence on his poetry

The present work undertakes to describe the undergraduate career of Countee Cullen at New York University between 1922 and 1925 and to present an edited text of his most significant surviving piece of undergraduate critical prose, the senior honors thesis he presented to the Department of English on May 1, 1925: "The Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay: An Appreciation." In both biographical and critical treatments of Cullen, these years have received scant attention, although they were immensely formative in his experience as a poet. In fact, the thesis that is presented here has never been published and is largely unknown to Cullen's readers or to students of the Harlem Renaissance.

The mind of...