Began 3:25pm to 4:30pm; resumed 1:10pm to 2:00pm Poetry For All Transcript of Episode 28: Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” [intro music] Abram: Hello, I’m Abram Van Engen. Joanne: And I’m Joanne Diaz. Abram: And this is _Poetry for All_. Joanne: In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time. Abram: And today we’re very excited to have Gerald Early join us to discuss the great Harlem Renaissance poet, Countee Cullen. Gerald Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in the African American Studies department at Washington University in Saint Louis. He’s a cultural critic who’s written on many different topics including literature, music, and sports. You may have seen him on several Ken Burns’ specials. He’s won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism along with a whole host of other honors. But most importantly for today, he is the person who edited and introduced the main collection of Countee Cullen’s poems called _My Soul’s High Song_. Welcome to the show, Gerald. Gerald: Thanks for having me. Joanne: Today we’re going to look at the first poem that’s in that collection of poetry. It’s titled “Yet Do I Marvel.” But before we discuss who Countee Cullen was and why he was so important, would you mind reading that poem for us? Gerald: Sure. “Yet Do I Marvel”: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42611/yet-do-i-marvel] Abram: Thank you for that. And before we get into closer reading of this poem and see how it works, can you tell us just a little bit about who Countee Cullen was? Gerald: Well, Countee Cullen was probably in the mid-1920s the most famous black poet in America and probably one of the most highly regarded Black writers in America in 1925, which is when this poem was published. He was adopted by a Black minister in Harlem, a Black Methodist minister, Fredrick Cullen. He was educated at mostly white schools, DeWitt Clinton High School was a mostly white high school, mostly for academically talented kids. He seemed to have always been interested in poetry and started writing poetry when he was still a teenager. In fact, he was still in high school. And studied English literature at NYU, which he was very influenced by Romantic poets and emerged from all of this, from his education and so forth as really, probably the most well-trained black poet in history to that time. And so he was a marriage of the man and the moment. He was this Black literary person interested in poetry coming out when he did in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925, which was a movement to try and create important Black artists, so he was very promoted. Joanne: One of the things I love about your introduction to this book of the collected works of Countee Cullen is that of course you focus so intensely on his life and work but you also provide such fantastic context. Just cultural, historical, political context, and you situate him so that we can better understand his significance. And so, one thing that interested me in your introduction, you say that the book that really kicked off the phase of the New-Negro movement, known as the Harlem Renaissance, was James Weldon Johnson’s 1922 anthology, _The Book of American Negro Poetry_. Can you say more about the role of that anthology and its relation to the Harlem Renaissance? Gerald: Sure. James Weldon Johnson was a major literary and political figure. He was very high placed in the NAACP, he was also a novelist and a poet himself, so he was very well established as a literary figure and could understand literary people. Johnson was very interested during the 20s in the Harlem Renaissance, but wanting to create a cannon. So basically, _The Book of American Negro Poetry_ was creating a Black canon. But what’s more important than the actual poets he actually put in the book was the introduction he wrote to the book. In the introduction, he kind of laid out the creed for the Harlem Renaissance, and the Harlem Renaissance was about--according to him--Black people creating great art because he said, “No people have ever been discriminated against for long if they have created great art.” And he said “Okay, Black people now create this great folk art,” you know? Black people have folk tales and they have folk music, because even at this time, like blues music. And even early Jazz music was considered by many people kind of folk music. So you know, black people created this kind of stuff and it’s been very important in the United States and very important fabric, very important part of the fabric of American culture. But _now_ what Black people need to do is to take this basic folk art and elevate it into high art, and what they need to do with poetry is to take kind of folk poetry that they’re creating and dialect poetry and to elevate this into really high art. So that was his thinking, and Cullen personified that. I mean, Cullen was a guy who looked like he could do that. Someone who could take certain kinds of Black themes and write technically precise poetry that would be well regarded in white critical circles. Joanne: I’m so interested in how anthologies and how literary reputation have worked over the decades since the Harlem Renaissance. So, quite often most people think of the most famous Harlem Renaissance poet is Langston Hughes, right? Gerald: Mhm. Right. Joanne: And of course, the first thing that I think of when I think of Langston Hughes are some of my favorite poems of his come from the Weary Blues, and that goes directly to your point about Jazz, about the Blues, but as you say, in the 1920s, the answer to that question would have been Countee Cullen. He would have been the most famous and I wonder if you could say a bit about how Cullen and Hughes were responding to Johnson. Gerald: Well, the two men were kind of rivals in a way. I mean, they were roughly the same age, they would have been young men. It was Cullen who _constantly_ kept saying “I’m a poet! I’m not a ‘Negro poet’” you know? “I don’t want to be considered a ‘Negro poet.’ I’m a poet. This is what I do now. I granted that racial themes may be in my poetry and so,”--but the fact that there was a _lot_ of racial themes in his poetry--but he felt that it was stigmatizing or kind of limiting label to say “oh, I’m a Negro poet.” On the other hand, Hughes had almost opposite view of that. He was “oh, well, everything I’m writing is coming out of racial consciousness. Everything I’m doing is coming out of the cultural _stuff_ of my peoples. I’m gonna do Jazz poetry and I’m gonna do Blues poetry. And I’m gonna use these forms that black people made and I’m gonna make poetry out of them.” And to Cullen [laughing] that sounded ridiculous! Cullen’s like “whoa, wait, you can’t do that!” That was like saying “oh, I’m gonna play tennis without a net.” So the men had _clearly_ very different perspectives about this, but the idea of someone clearly announcing “I am a black writer” became something that Black audiences preferred. Abram: Yeah, all of that comes to the fore in this poem with those last two remarkable, very quotable lines: “Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: / to make a poet black, and bid him sing!” And this whole question of “well, _how_ to sing.” These are the questions that come to the fore in this poem, which is the first poem in this collection that you put together and I think it kind of nicely opens up all these struggles that are going on. And there’s--of course--one other big struggle, big aspect to Cullen’s identity that’s part of this poem, which is--I mean--he was fostered by this Christian minister, this Methodist minister. He was Christian himself, though he struggled with it. A lot of that comes through in a lot of his poetry, so we have this beginning “I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,” and we start with these sort of classic problem of pain, “well, if he is good and well-meaning and kind, what’s the deal with all this stuff?” So can you say something about the role of Christianity, especially the sense of some particular ambiguities that were associated with being a Black Christian in the 1920s. Gerald: Yeah. Cullen had a deep Christian consciousness, partly because of his adopted father, and a lot of his poems have a lot to do with Christianity and this kind of struggle that he’s having. Here, it’s a kind of standard struggle about how is God good if bad stuff is happening in the world? How is God good? And that’s something he has looked at in several of his poems. He struggles with Christianity in part because he felt that he had this very strong--what he called--“pagan” or “hedonistic” streak in him and stuff like that, that he felt that was in conflict with his Christian orientation. Part of this was probably because he was homosexual, so I think that this was a struggle with him morally speaking, bisexual. He’s married. Twice, in his life. So I mean, he sets it up in this way about God being good, well-meaning, and kind, and yet you have the kind of world you have. It’s interesting that the two examples he gave are examples from Greek mythology. Tantalus and Sisyphus. It’s pretty clear if you read them there’s a why Tantalus and Sisyphus are being punished for one thing, and it’s pretty clear _why_ they’re being punished if you read the stories. It was not uncommon at all for many white people and for some Black people to think that being Black was some form of punishment. And _many_ Black people believed--let’s say back in 19th century up into the 20th century--that being Black was some kind of trial that God was putting Black people through. Maybe like a trial that Tantalus and Sisyphus were going through, or something like that. Of course, the real problem is, the real issue is, “to make a poet black and bid him sing” is not _just_ being Black, but being a poet and for somebody who was saying as he says constantly, and as I quoted, I believe a couple of times in the introduction, “oh, I’m not a Negro poet, I’m just a poet” and here he is saying in this thing to “make a poet black and bid him sing” so being a Black poet is a distinct thing. And if it’s some kind of contradiction, what is it? Is it some kind of punishment? Is it some kind of trial? Why is it particularly strange that God would make a poet black and bid him sing? I mean, it’s fine to be Black if I wasn’t being put in this particular position, so I mean it’s broaching a lot of interesting questions. The fact that he’s decided to frame this whole issue about his race in a larger, kind of theological way in relation to his religion, I mean, instead of wanting to frame it--which he could have--in a purely political way, I thought was interesting but I assumed was partly because of his upbringing and because Christianity is--if you read his corpus of all of his poetry--Christianity is something that’s extremely important to him. Joanne: You know, as I hear you talking about this poem--which is so rich and so complex--I love those final two lines and as you have observed, people have quoted them for generations. But part of what maybe makes them so memorable is because in the broader context of the poem, this is a poem that does not resolve what it’s grappling with. This is a really serious struggle for this poetic speaker and he can’t find a way to resolve this conflict, right? And even in the first line of the poem, which I love so much [laughs], there’s some wit to it, yeah? Gerald: Yeah. Joanne: You can infer that someone is saying to this poetic speaker “God is great,” so someone is trying to convince Countee Cullen “no, no. God is definitely great” and instead of saying “I am convinced God is good,” he’s like “I doubt not God is good, well-meaning” well, people are well-meaning, but usually when we say they’re well-meaning, they’re often doing something really lousy. Gerald: [laughing] Abram: [laughing] Joanne: You know. So for the idea that God could be good and well-meaning and if he took the time to talk to us he could explain why he’s made us and animals and these mythological figures the way he has. But he doesn’t stoop to speak to us, so we can’t know. Gerald: Right, he doesn’t speak to us. Joanne: No. Gerald: And your point is well taken, I mean, I’m a human who knows how much irony there is in that first line of the poem. As I said, his grappling with his religion was not ultimately that he resolved things and I think your point is well taken that this poem does not resolve in so far as the speaker’s dilemma goes, it’s not resolved. It’s a mystery and God won’t speak to us, so he won’t tell you. So, yeah, it’s not unusual in several of his poems where he’s talking about Christianity that there is a kind of aura or tint of irony in what he’s saying. Certainly about the nature of his relationship with, or the nature of human, of human beings to God and the inscrutable nature of this being that created you and kinda shut you off from any kind of understanding of what He is or what _it_ is and His ways are inscrutable, His ways are “immune / to catechism by a mind too strewn / with petty cares to slightly understand / what awful brain compels His awful hand.” While there’s great dissonance between God and people, in case you didn’t know that! But what he feels about that is unclear about what he feels about that distance, but there is coming to through in this poem a certain sense of alienation of God and people in someway because God won’t speak. Now that’s an interesting thing to talk about or think about for black Christians in particular coming out of the tradition he did, to talk about this certain kind of alienation from God or something because in the black Church and Black Churches he was raised in, what’s one of the things that’s _really_ emphasized is “oh, you know, I have this really deep personal relationship with God!” And, you know, he’s like “mmh. That’s kind of tough to have with a being that’s like you can’t comprehend it and you know, your mind doesn’t” and he’s like the being doesn’t communicate with you and your mind can’t comprehend what it is and it’s kinda tough to have a personal relationship with that. And of course, here in this poem as well, as a Christian–I mean, one of the absences in this poem is Jesus, who is supposed to be _that_ figure, that is supposed to be the intermediate between God and man–but yet there is no mediation here at all in this poem, which is kinda interesting. Abram: One of the things that I see going on here in terms of that invocation of Christian theology and theodicy is he’s really invoking a lot of big traditions that he’s then inserting himself into at the very end. So the Christian theology and theodicy is one, Greek mythology with Tantalus and Sisyphus is another. The whole English sonnet tradition–of course, this is a sonnet in and of itself–and so in a way he’s drawing on all of these big Western traditions and then turning in the last couplet saying, “And here I am black poet and you’re bidding me sing.” Gerald: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good point and certainly that was something that was on Cullen’s mind all the time about inserting himself in these. And being, and trying someway to be able to claim those traditions as his own. Now that you mention it, I remember a kid in the class when I taught this poem in the years ago; a Black kid said, said something like that about the problem that black people have. One of the problems you have as a black artist is that you’re hooked up to a set of traditions that don’t lead you to where you want to go exactly, but there are a set of traditions that you have because you don’t have any others! [laughing] It’s either this or it’s what James Baldwin once said. I have to figure out what Baldwin once said, I have to figure out my way in this scheme, and what he meant was America and the Western world. I have to figure out my place in this scheme because if I don’t, I don’t have any other scheme. This _is_ the scheme. Abram: Well, the links to Tantalus and Sisyphus are interesting in that respect too. I mean, Joanne and I were talking about it before and Joanne mentioned that with Tantalus, he’s always reaching for the prize and never getting it and with Sisyphus, it’s a sort of endless task, endless labor that has to always start over again, and so there seems to be a reason why these are the two particular myths that he’s drawing on to talk about black poets singing in America, right? “Tantalus, you’re never gonna be given the prize. Sisyphus, it’s gonna be an endless task” how long do we have to keep doing this? Gerald: Exactly, right. I’m never gonna get the prize, I’m always just going to be tantalized by it and the water will always recede when I try to drink, the fruit will always rise up when I try to reach it. So yeah, and I always say that those two myths will probably capture in some ways a certain kind of attitude about black peoples’ relationship with the West and with America and with the whole set of European traditions that they have and yet in some ways that they don’t have, that they’re trying to claim and in some ways people are saying “you can’t claim that” and then you’re saying that “if I can’t claim this, there’s nothing else I can claim because this is the only thing I know.” Joanne: The longer I listen, the more I really start to see that the sonnet form was a perfect structure for him to inhabit. Not just for all the reasons you described, but also because formal poetry is so good because in some ways, it kind of cools down what might be some really hot emotions because it sort of creates like a measured, rhetorical sort of cadence for it, right? But the more I listen, the more I sense that there’s some very hot emotions here and that each of these examples provides an illustration for–as you’ve been discussing–the difficult labor, the never ending struggle and when I look at how he links that first line with the last two, the poem is full of concessions. He’s willing to concede so much and yet, he says “I don’t doubt that God is good. He’s well meaning, He’s kind. And yet, I just have to marvel at this curious thing.” I’m interested in those words: “marvel” and “curious.” He’s not saying that he’s grappling with this difficult thing, he’s marveling at this. That distance that you talked about earlier, it’s almost like he’s keeping his distance because to confront the truth of it is so hard, right? And then he ends with “To make a poet black, and bid him sing” exclamation point. I’ve always lingered on that exclamation point because I wonder why he chose that and I think it’s partly because it’s almost like a gesture of disbelief at the situation of how difficult it is to rise to this task. Gerald: I do think that the form permits him to express himself very passionately in some respects but also permits him a certain detachment. And I think he’s trying to seek that balance, and I think he’s trying to seek this kind of balance in some of the other things he wrote. “Okay, I have this passion and this great sense of this kind of cosmic justice or a great sense of just puzzlement about our current situation or whatever the races or whatever,” but also by doing it in the sonnet form, he could harness it and discipline it and in this way exhibit a certain kind of detachment from it and creating this kind of voice that he wanted to create. There is a certain kind of real sense of mastery that I think he wants to convey here but I also think he also wants to convey a certain kind of opening this sort of thing up particularly to his black audience. One of the things I think he wants to _try_ to do is to show is that “these kind of forms are not alien to you. They can do the work, the creative work that you need for them to do.” Abram: And some of the creative work done is the ways that a sonnet tradition has so many inherited rules and then when you mess with those rules, you sort of layer meanings into the poem. At a different episode of this podcast, we looked at Claude McKay’s famous sonnet “America” and how he twists the rhymes within the scheme to show himself sort of twisting within this concept of America. And here, with this sonnet, we have three separate sentences which set up different places where turns might happen. He’s got a clear, eight-six divide, which is very traditional to a sonnet. Eight lines and then six lines by the rhyme schemes. The six lines are two couplets each, so that’s a little unusual, but what that enables him to do is then he’s got a long sentence to begin with that’s eight lines long. You might expect a turn there, but then he gets the kind of amplification there, that kind of general principle that God’s ways are inscrutable and that he’s just got this awful brain compelling this awful hand and we’re just never gonna get to the bottom of it. And then that allows for this turn in the last couple lines, except it’s not exactly a turn, it’s yet a further amplification. So if a sonnet has a traditional turn to it, the way I read this poem is that all it has is amplifications of the point. But the other thing I notice about that last line. We talked about that three sort of longstanding traditions that are invoked here–Christian mythology, Greek mythology, sonnet tradition–but _then_, at least what I hear echos of in that last line, is the classic African American spiritual, “By the rivers of Babylon where we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion,” and that goes on and says “and the wicked carried us away in captivity required from us a song. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” And that’s of course pulling from the Psalms, but that’s an old classic spiritual, so in some ways I feel him invoking the spiritual even in the midst of an English sonnet. Gerald: Yeah, that’s perfectly reasonable considering his background and so forth. He’s very schooled in black religious music and the like. And he makes references to Black religious music in some of his other poetry, so in the black poetic tradition, the first Black poets were considered the people who created the spirituals. Joanne: With all that said, would you be willing to read this poem again? Gerald: Sure. Why not? [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42611/yet-do-i-marvel] Abram: Thank you, Gerald. For more information about Countee Cullen, please visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm. [outro music begins] Joanne: And you can subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts and please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Abram: Thank you so much for joining us today, Gerald. Gerald: Thank you for having me. Abram: And thank you all for listening. [outro music continues to end]