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Sterling A. Brown was born and raised
in Washington DC. His Alma Mater was Williams
University where he like Countee Cullen graduated Phi Beta Kappa, He also received his
Masters from Harvard University
"Heritage" is Cullen's attempt to try and balance the two sides of his conformity to anglo-saxon culture and his african roots, the flood he stresses is the pride of his traditions while the glowing ember is his indignation in trying to silence that part of him.
(Poem #1497) For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty
Not writ in water nor in mist,
Sweet lyric throat, thy name.
Thy singing lips that cold death kissed
Have seared his own with flame.
-- Countee Cullen
Sterling Allen Brown was born in Washington
DC and was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance in DC
Countee Cullen is considered to be one of the most
honored poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Some of his most famous poems were
Some of Sterling Brown's famous
Poems were:
The Harlem Renaissance was also known as The Black Literary Renaissance and it was a revolutionary time for the Literary World. The Black Literary Renaissance, like the Harlem Renaissance took place between the 1920's and the 1930's. It began in Harlem, New York.
While at Harvard
In this time Popular culture was being influenced by African Americans, as African American art, literature and music were just beginning to be recognized.
Cullen was a radical writer who strongly protested against racial oppression. Cullen rejected using African American traditions and used his education to write in European forms but he did till write of the trails of life as an African American in a predominantly white society. Cullen was a leading voice in the Harlem renaissance and Cullen's Color was a landmark of this historic period. In his later life he tried to get away from being a black poet and wanted to just be known as a great poet who happened to be black.
What made Cullen different from most black writers at the times was that he was a black man with considerable academic training who could write as many whites did with verse-ballads, sonnets, and quatrains John Keats. He even wrote a poem for Keats
“Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English Language, may have more to gain from the rich background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African American inheritance.”
Sterling Allen Brown was born
May 1, 1901 in Washington DC
a few famous African American Poets from the Harlem Renaissance/Black Literary Renaissance were:
The reverend was a powerful figure in the community and he was also an official in the NAACP. With the reverends help Cullen enrolled in DeWitt Clinton High School one of the best highschools in New York. He excelled in academics between the years 1918 and 1921. He was elected to ARISTA, the scholastic honor society, and upon graduation, received distinctions in Latin, mathematics, English, history and French. He was editor of the school paper, he assisted in editing the literary magazine Magpie, and from there his poetry began to achieve notice. His first published piece was "I Have a Rendezvous with Life," a nonracial poem inspired by Alan Seeger's "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." With this poem he won his first poetry contest. During the summers to make some money Cullen worked at the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City where he was quoted saying:
"It is by no means a position, just a job," he said, "but it gives me time to study some of the vermin of the race, and since three-fourths of every race is vermin, I am in with the masses."
In 1926 Countee Cullen Graduated with a
MA in English from Harvard University
and continued writing many of the works that made him so famous today until he passed in 1946. (Patton& Honey p554-561)
Many books were written
that documented the successes
of Harlem Renaissance writers.
Such as double take which documents the creation of African Americans Literary Identity in the 1920s and the 1930s.
The
Harlem
Renaissance
Noteworthy Work After 1930:
* Novel One Way to Heaven, published in 1934, (black satires The other three important fictional retrospectives of the Harlem Renaissance: Wallace Thurman's Infants of the Spring and George S. Schuyler's Black No More.
* Cullen Translated The Medea: The first major translation of a classical work by a twentieth-century black American writer.
* Cullen's children's literature: The Lost Zoo and *Christopher Cat, (written at a time when there was not much published in this area by black writers)
* Wrote a musical with Arna Bontemps called St. Louis Woman (based on Bontemps's novel God Sends Sunday)
* Countee Cullen died on Janurary 9th 1946 of high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on 9 January 1946.
Countee Cullen was born on March 30th 1903. Countee very secretive about his life and there was much confusion on where exactly he was born. His college transcript says Louisville, Kentucky, be he himself has been quoted saying that he was born in New York. “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (Volume 1 third edition) states his birth place as Louisville, Kentucky born by the name of Countee Leroy Porter. Raised by his grandmother until her death Cullen was then raise by a Methodist minister names Reverend Fredrick A. Cullen.
After high school he attended New York University where he wrote many of his popular poems. Cullen's first collection of poems, Color was published in 1925. The book included 'Heritage' and 'Incident,' probably his most famous poems. In May of 1925, Cullen also won second prize in the Opportunity literary contest for his poem "To One Who Said Me Nay." In 1926 under Charles S. Johnson Cullen became assistant editor for Opportunity. While he was there he wrote editorials and a column called "The Dark Tower" which featured book reviews and articles. Cullen won more major literary prizes than any other black writer of the 1920s
Countee Cullen's Alma Mater was New York University and he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1925. While attending NYU Countee Cullen began publishing national Journals winning him awards in the National Undergraduate Witter Bynner Poetry Contest, and in other contests by The Crisis and Opportunity.By His Senior Year at NYU Cullen had secured a contract to publish his first poetry collection "Color"
This book similar to our Norton Anthology book
on Modern Poetry goes through various Poets
from the Harlem Renaissance and highlights
what they brought as a poet to the movement.
From 1930 on Cullen wrote a lot less and spent most of his time teaching French and English at the Frederick Douglass Junior High School, PS 139. He was a very popular teacher there and inspired the likes of his most famous student James Baldwin.
Sterling Brown's
poems were found to be
playful and often pessimistic
poems in Standard English and Black Vernacular.
Many of Sterling Brown's poems have a theme
of Strong Women and Men resisting the oppression
of racism, poverty and fate. (poets.org)
After NYU Cullen attended He also attended Harvard University and received his Master of Arts degree.
After graduating from Harvard University Cullen received the Harmon Foundation Literary Award in 1927 as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship for study abroad in France. Before going to France On 9 April 1928 Cullen married Yolande Du Bois, only child of leading African American intellectual W E. B. Du Bois. The couple was then divorced only two months later and then divorced in 1930.
Some of Countee
Cullen's poems were
said to question the
benevolence of a Creator
who made a race with
such mixed blessings
Sterling Brown won his first
Prize in 1927 in an Opportunity
contest for his poem "When de Saints Go Ma'ching
Home" Later in his writing career Sterling became known as a foundational critic of the African American Literary Tradition, he died in 1989 in Takoma Park, Maryland.
(Patton & Honey, p450-457)
At the end of world war 1 there was a migration of African Americans moving from the south where there were a lot of economic issues to the North to places like Chicago, Washington DC, and New York.
With the migration came new opportunities for African Americans to explore and celebrate their heritage artistically, this era became known as The Harlem Renaissance