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Countee Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel"

BIOGRAPHY

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[from The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1903–1946)

During his own lifetime, Countee Cullen was the most celebrated and honored poet of the Harlem Renaissance, and he claimed New York City as his birthplace. In fact, he may have been born in Louisville, Kentucky, and the circumstances of his childhood adoption by the Reverend Frederick Cullen remain obscure. It is certain, though, that the poet received a good education at New York's DeWitt Clinton High School and then New York University. After receiving his M.A. at Harvard, Cullen returned to New York in 1926 and soon established himself as the leading figure in the active Harlem literary world, winning numerous awards for his poetry and editing the influential monthly column “The Dark Tower” for Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life. A playwright, novelist, translator, and anthologist, Cullen is best remembered as a poet; his work has been collected in the volume My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance (1991).

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