Color by Countee Cullen
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$125.00
$125.00
per item
Cullen, Countee. Color. Later Printing. 1925. Book and dust jacket are both in very good minus condition—light foxing to endpapers; light soiling and fading to jacket. Drawings by Charles Cullen.
There is a difference between writing about one’s situation and being defined by it, and this great Harlem Renaissance poet never crosses the line. Cullen’s first book, the first half consists of longer, more serious poems, many of which relate to the experience of an African American in a racially polarized era. He shifts to mirth in the second part, which consists of satirical one-page epigrams that are sheer delight and must have made even Dorothy Parker green with envy. The interior pages are illustrated in the same Art Deco style of the jacket.
“For some, godfather and goddame/The opulent fairies be/Dame Poverty gave me my name/And Pain godfathered me.”
--Countee Cullen, “Saturday’s Child”
There is a difference between writing about one’s situation and being defined by it, and this great Harlem Renaissance poet never crosses the line. Cullen’s first book, the first half consists of longer, more serious poems, many of which relate to the experience of an African American in a racially polarized era. He shifts to mirth in the second part, which consists of satirical one-page epigrams that are sheer delight and must have made even Dorothy Parker green with envy. The interior pages are illustrated in the same Art Deco style of the jacket.
“For some, godfather and goddame/The opulent fairies be/Dame Poverty gave me my name/And Pain godfathered me.”
--Countee Cullen, “Saturday’s Child”
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