SOURCE: "Mr. Cullen's Second Book," in Poetry, Vol. 31, No. 5, February, 1928, pp. 284-86.

In the following review, the critic states that Copper Sun is of mixes quality yet the best poems of the collection are memorable.

Countee Cullen's second book [Copper Sun] has evidently suffered somewhat from the effort to pad the pages with poems written during his formative period. If the book's reputation were to stand on the quality of the more important poems about which it has been built, then it would take its place as a more mature volume than Color. Unfortunately readers and critics are apt to judge by the worst as well as by the best, and the average falls slightly below that of the first volume. The poems which mark the height of the author's achievement are "Threnody for a Brown Girl," which won the John Reed Memorial Prize in 1925, "From the Dark...