For A Poet

“For a Poet” by Countee Cullen was originally published in Cullen’s first collection, Color (1925). The release of Cullen’s collection marked the early ascendancy of one of the principal poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Color retains its potency today, with its entangled depictions of African American lives facing a crisis of identity. The collection portrays African Americans struggling with finding their place within the white-European culture in which they were raised while longing for a half-conceived past in an Africa from which they have been formally sundered, particularly in its most famous poem, “Heritage.”

“For a Poet” features a speaker, presumably Cullen, who describes in a metaphorical manner the measures he must take in order to protect his dreams. This was particularly relevant in Cullen’s experience as a Black bisexual man in the 1920s. The poem is tinged with sadness and loneliness, however, as the implication is that the speaker will never be able to realize, fully at least, their dreams.

It is a curious poem to find in the debut collection of a poet burgeoning with potential, though one that is not out of place for Cullen. The poet struggled to define his own place in terms of his sexuality, and as a poet who was raised and educated in western European culture yet asked to define a new cultural identity. The tension and resignation of the short poem combine to provide a portrait of a young man who is unsure of what the future holds yet is certain of the sacrifices he must make to realize his carefully guarded dreams.

Poet Biography

Countee Cullen was one of the foremost poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born Countee LeRoy Porter in May of 1903, though his birthplace is unknown due to the scarcity of records. In 1912, he was brought to Harlem by a woman who is believed to have been his paternal grandmother, where she raised him until her death in 1917. He was then adopted by Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, an influential and charismatic pastor of Harlem’s largest congregation who later became president of the Harlem chapter of the NAACP.

Cullen assumed the name of his adoptive parent and quickly made a name for himself in the flowering arts scene of Harlem. He routinely placed first and second in prestigious poetry contests, while also garnering praise for his work in academia, particularly in the study of English poetry, which he consciously modeled his own prose after. His successes continued through high school and his undergraduate work at New York University. In 1925 he was accepted into Harvard’s master’s program, and he published his first volume of poetry, Color, which included his most famous poems, “Yet Do I Marvel,” “Heritage,” and “Incident” as well as “To a Poet.”

Cullen’s work, which reached a zenith over the next four years, came to stand as some of the most significant poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of African American arts that emanated out of the cultural milieu of the New York neighborhood. This, coupled with his extremely high-profile wedding to Nina DuBois, the daughter of W. E. B. DuBois, the widely acknowledged leader of the African American intellectual community, cemented Cullen’s fame. Cullen was perplexed by his own sexuality, however, and the marriage to DuBois quickly deteriorated. Though he would marry again, Cullen had male lovers, many of whom were connected to the literary community. Cullen continued to write, releasing three more books of poetry and editing an important anthology before 1929, but his work in the 1930s, a novel and several works for the theater, couldn’t achieve the incandescent vision of his work in the previous decade. From the mid-1930s until his early death, Cullen taught English, French, and Creative Writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City and authored two books for children. He died in 1946, at age 42, in Harlem.

Poem Text

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold.

Where long will cling the lips of the moth,

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;

I hide no hate; I am not even wroth

Who found earth’s breath so keen and cold;

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold.

Cullen, Countee. “For a Poet.” 1925. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

The speaker, in a metaphorical manner, discusses the care they take in safeguarding their dreams, by wrapping them “in a silken cloth” (Line 1) and laying them away “in a box of gold” (Line 2). Initially, the speaker’s reasoning seems to stem from keeping the dreams safe from decay, “the lips of the moth” (Line 3). The fourth line, a repetition of the first line, sounds like the speaker reassuring themselves of the positive action they have taken, though the repetition introduces a note of uncertainty.

In Line 5, the speaker denies that in laying away their dreams, they are not hiding hate, nor are they “wroth” (Line 5) or experiencing anger about what has made them lay away their dreams. The sixth line loosely defines what caused the speaker to possible feel hate: the “earth’s breath so keen and cold” (Line 6).

In the final two lines, the speaker repeats their assertion of the first two lines, though the statement’s emotion has shifted from a proud action of safekeeping to a resigned action the speaker must undertake in order to move on from the keen and cold breath of the earth.