Reviews

My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen- Voice of the Harlem Renaissance by Gerald Early, Countee Cullen

spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition

3.0

I love a lot of Countée Cullen's poetry, but this is probably my favourite poem of his, because of its poignancy and simplicity:

INCIDENT

(for Eric Walrond)

Once riding in old Baltimore,
　Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
　Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
　And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
　His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
　From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
　That’s all that I remember.