Our last 1920’s anthology of African American poets is Caroling Dusk, published in 1927 and edited by Countee Cullen, himself an African American poet, playwright, columnist, and author of some note. He was also quite likely gay or bisexual; he was married twice (his first wife was the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois) and engaged in multiple relationships with men, including Harold Jackman, a lifelong friend and/or partner–the exact nature of their relationship remains uncertain. Cullen received a Master’s in English from Harvard University in 1926.
The anthology includes poems by poets already visited in this series, including Angelina Weld Grimke and Alice Dunbar Nelson. The poems below are from poets not anthologized in the other selections, including Countee Cullen himself.
Countee Cullen
From the Dark Tower
(To Charles S. Johnson)
We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
Four Epitaphs
1 For my Grandmother
This lovely flower fell to seed;
Work gently sun and rain;
She held it as her dying creed
That she would grow again.
2 For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty
Not writ in water nor in mist,
Sweet lyric throat, thy name.
Thy singing lips that could death kissed
Have seared his own with flame.
3 For Paul Laurence Dunbar
Born of the sorrowful of heart
Mirth was a crown upon his head;
Pride kept his twisted lips apart
In jest, to hide a heart that bled.
4 For a Lady I Know
She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores,
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.
Lula Lowe Weeden
Lula Lowe Weeden was only nine years old when she wrote the poems included in Caroling Dusk. As she grew older, she stopped writing poetry, but became an art educator in Denver. She was a neighbor of Anne Spencer and an acquaintance of W.E.B. DuBois.
Dance
Down at the hall at midnight sometimes,
You hear them singing rhymes.
These girls are dancing with boys.
They are too big for toys.
The Little Dandelion
The dandelion stares
In the yellow sunlight.
How very still it is!
When it is old and grey,
I blow its white hair away,
And leave it with a bald head.
Have You Seen It
Have you ever seen the moon
And stars stick together?
Have you ever seen it?
Have you ever seen bad?
Have you ever seen good
And bad stick together?
Have you ever seen it?
Anne Spencer
Although she was from Virginia, Anne Spencer is considered a major poet of the Harlem Renaissance. She and her husband, Edward Spencer, were instrumental in reviving the Virginia chapter of the NAACP. Though she began writing poetry when she was attending the Virginia Seminary, her work was not published until she was 40.
Dunbar
Ah, how poets sing and die!
Make one song and Heaven takes it;
Have one heart and Beauty breaks it;
Chatterton, Shelley, Keats, and I—
Ah, how poets sing and die!
Substitution
Is Life itself but many ways of thought,
Does thinking furl the poets’ pleiades,
Is in His slightest convolution wrought
These mantled worlds and their men-freighted seas?
He thinks—and being comes to ardent things:
The splendor of the day-spent sun, love’s birth,—
Or dreams a little, while creation swings
The circle of His mind and Time’s full girth . . .
As here within this noisy peopled room
My thought leans forward . . . quick! you’re lifted clear
Of brick and frame to moonlit garden bloom,—
Absurdly easy, now, our walking, dear,
Talking, my leaning close to touch your face . . .
His All-Mind bids us keep this sacred place!
SOURCES/FURTHER READING
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Caroling_Dusk/TFAGAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40743365?seq=1 A review of Caroling Dusk from The American Poetry Review.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-sioux-city-journal-collection-of-poe/70963994/ A 1929 review of Caroling Dusk from the Sioux City Journal.
Countee Cullen
https://poets.org/poet/countee-cullen
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/countee-cullen
https://rictornorton.co.uk/cullen.htm Excerpts from My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries (1998), edited by Rictor Norton
https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/40 Countee Cullen-Harold Jackman memorial collection at Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center, Inc.. Cullen and Jackman enjoyed a long-term relationship. This collection includes original manuscripts from numerous literary figures, including James Baldwin, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and W.E.B. DuBois.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070216083117/http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/poets/cullen.php
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/41/ Full text of Cullen’s poetry collection Color.
Lula Lowe Weeden
https://poets.org/poet/lula-lowe-weeden
Anne Spencer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Spencer
https://web.archive.org/web/20201130203658/http://www.annespencermuseum.com/house.php
https://www.virginia.org/listing/anne-spencer-house-%26-garden-museum-the/240/
https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/u4700310 Papers of Anne Spencer and the Spencer Family
https://web.archive.org/web/20181003093657/http://www.annespencermuseum.com/biography.php
https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/entries/500
https://littleknownblacklibrarianfacts.blogspot.com/2011/08/anne-spencer-and-dunbar-branch-of.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-spencer
https://aaregistry.org/story/anne-spencer-a-poet-of-many-styles/