Works by
Countee Cullen
(Poet)
[1904 - 1946)

• Color (1925)

• The Ballad of the Brown Girl: An old Ballad Retold (1927)

• The Black Christ & Other Poems  (1929)

• One Way to Heaven (1932)

• The Medea and Some Poems (1935)

• The Lost Zoo (1940) with J. Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)
  Poems explain why animals such as the Wakeupworld, the Squilililigee, the Sleepamitemore, and the Treasuretit did not get onto Noah's Ark, and are therefore not seen in any zoo today. Ages 9-12.

• My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942)

• On These I Stand:  An Anthology Of The Best Poems Of Countee Cullen  (1947)

• My Soul's High Song (1990)
  For the first time in more than two decades, the very best of Countee Cullen's poetry and prose is available in one collection.

Anthologies

• Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties (1927)
  This selection from the work of thirty-eight poets was made by Countee Cullen in 1927. His stated purpose at the time was to bring together a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse. Beginning with the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, who, though there were black poets before him, is generally credited as the first black poet to make a deep impression on the literary world, the book includes the writings of James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Faucet, Sterling A. Brown, Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen himself, to name only a few.

  Each poem includes poignant biographical notes written by the poets themselves, with the exception of the notes on Dunbar (written by his wife), Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. (written by his father), and Lula Weeden (written by her mother).

  Most of the poets became well known and widely published in the years that followed. These poems remain powerful statements of what it means to be human, whatever the race.

  Long out of print, "Caroling Dusk" is a valuable addition to the body of black literature. This is the first time the anthology has appeared in a paperback edition.

See also:

• The Negro American's Interpretation of Life as Revealed in Contemporary Negro American Poetry (Date?) by Mary Jane Hartman

• Survey Graphic:  Harlem Mecca of the New Negro (March 1925) by Alain Locke (1925)
  "This reproduction of a groundbreaking issue of the social-science magazine Survey Graphic contains some of the seminal writings of the Harlem Renaissance. The magazine was compiled and edited by Alain Locke, a pioneering black Rhodes scholar and graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and Berlin Universities who later taught at Howard University. Locke's triumphant essay "Enter the New Negro" articulates the political, scientific, and artistic strivings of the Afro-American in Harlem. Other contributions include Countee Cullen's eternal poem "Heritage," a short story by W.E.B. Du Bois, and historian Arturo Schomburg's ancestral call to arms, "The Negro Digs Up His Past." These writings, and the dignified portraits of famous and nonfamous Negroes by German artist Winold Reiss, make this document a timeless testimony to black achievement. --Eugene Holley, Jr." -- Amazon.com

• Roots of Negro Racial Consciousness: The 1920's, Three Harlem Renaissance Authors (1964) by Stephen H Bronz

• Countee Cullen and the Negro Renaissance (1966)

• Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors (1968) by Edward Margolies

• A Bio-Bibliography of Countee P. Cullen, 1903-1946 (1970) by Margaret Perry
  A long essay on "The Man and His Poetry" plus extensive bibliography of Cullen's major writings, writings about Cullen, including newspaper references, and poetry anthologies in which Cullen's work appeared.

• In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and their Search for Identity (1971) by Darwin T. Turner

• Black Poets of the United States:  From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes (1973) by Jean Wagner with Kenneth Douglas, Illustrator

• Many-Colored Coat of Dreams: The Poetry of Countee Cullen (1974) by Houston Baker

• Black Poetry in America (1974) by Blyden Jackson and  Louis D. Rubin

• Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Countee Cullen Papers, 1921-1969 (1975) by Florence E Borders

• Harlem Renaissance: An Annotated Bibliography (1981) by Margaret Perry

• Countee Cullen (1984) by Alan R. Shucard

• Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (1987) by Houston A. Baker Jr. (1987)

• Countee Cullen: Poet (1995) by B. Marvis and Nathan I. Huggins

• World Authors: 1900-1950 (1996) by Andrew C. Kimmens and  Martin Seymour-Smith, eds.

• The Atlas of Literature (1996) by Malcolm Bradbury (1996)
  See especially the chapter on Harlem Renaissance.

• Pride and Promise: The Harlem Renaissance (1997), Kathryn Cryan-Hicks, ed.

• Critical Essays: Achebe, Baldwin, Cullen, Ngugi, and Tutuola (1999) by Sydney E. Onyeberechi