Countee Cullen
Born May 30, 1903
Most sources say Louisville, Kentucky
Died January 9, 1946
New York, New York
American poet, novelist, and dramatist
"If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be a POET and not a NEGRO poet."
One of the most promising young poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen was a favorite of the Talented Tenth (as defined by W.E.B. Du Bois and his followers, the most accomplished and ambitious segment of African American society) due both to his gentlemanly personal style and his highly acclaimed poetry. Cullen wished to be recognized on his own merits and struggled against being defined as a "black" poet. His writing style reflected his regard for the nineteenth-century poets of the romantic movement (romanticism was a movement in literature that promoted emotion and imagination), including John Keats (1795–1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), and William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Unlike Langston Hughes (1902–1967; see biographical entry)—his chief competitor for the title of Harlem's leading poet—Cullen employed traditional verse forms like the sonnet and the ballad, and he used a formal voice instead of the blues- and jazz-influenced "street" language Hughes used. Much of Cullen's poetry does reflect his concern about racial issues, though, even if he chose to express those concerns in a more conventional way than other Harlem Renaissance writers.
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