Literary Birthday – 30 May – Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was born on 30 May 1903 and died on 9 January 1946.

Countee Cullen Quotes

1. I have a rendezvous with life.
2. If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.
3. There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks’.
4. In order for a writer to succeed, I suggest three things – read and write – and wait.
5. Your love to me was like an unread book.
6. The truth is… everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.
7. My poetry, I think, has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

Countee Cullen was an African-American poet, novelist, children’s writer, and playwright who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. At New York University (B.A., 1925) he won the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. A selection of his poetry and prose is available in one collection: My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen.

Source for Photograph: R. W. Bullock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Countee_Cullen_headshot.png

by Amanda Patterson

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