For A Poet

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1929

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Re-creation of Self

The poem positions itself as a marker between two points; the past, to which the speaker is referring, and the prospective future, for which the speaker is preparing. As such, it marks a transition, but one that is effected by the speaker rather than one that is brought about by external circumstances. The speaker’s actions drive the poem and its significance, centering its reflection on the action of wrapping “dreams in a silken cloth” (Line 1) and laying “them away in a box of gold” (Line 2), while only hinting at the circumstances that left the speaker with little other choice. The necessity of this action, of wrapping dreams in a silken cloth, is emphasized through its repetition, as is the laying away of such dreams. This is the only physical act described in “For a Poet,” and it is an act of interment. The implication of the poem, centering on this sole action, is that a new life is only possible with the death of the old life.

The placement of the poem in the Epitaph section of Color evokes words after death, a culminating statement of the lived life. “For a Poet” makes use of death imagery—the burial of dreams and the presence of a moth—to indicate an end, whether it be a part of life or a fostered hope. Cullen carefully describes his metaphorical action, “I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth, / And laid them away in a box of gold” (Lines 1-2), continuing the statement of the first line into the second to suggest the methodical process in which he is engaged while also allowing its processual flow to create a micro-narrative. Cullen then turns his metaphorical action into a refrain, allowing it to accrue different shades of meaning with each repetition, though each time the implication is the same, the new self is burying the old self.

The physical act, repeated three times, takes on a ritualistic manner, with its final iteration (Lines 7, 8) acting as a sundering statement, an affirmation of the power and appropriateness of the act. The final quatrain is one of distancing, alluding to the reasons that forced the extinction of the past self—the beholding of the earth’s “keen and cold” (Line 6) breath—before moving to the final repetition of the interment in an almost ritualistic manner. These are the final words the poet will speak of his dreams, for he recognizes the necessity of having to bury them. He sees how they lead to the death of his former self, and while he mourns this self, he also understands that if further life is possible, his former dreams, and all they entail, must be buried in the secret part of his heart, which contains a silken cloth and a box of gold.

Repressed Desire

The act of interment Cullen depicts in “For a Poet” can be read in another fashion: as a portrait of repressed desire. While Cullen makes use of the connotations of death in his action of laying away his dreams in a box of gold, the third line, with its image of “the lips of the moth,” introduces a subtle eroticism to the poem. The moth, with its lips clinging to the box of gold, seems engaged in a longing kiss, like a lover unable to consummate their desire.

The placement of “For a Poet” as the leading entry in the Epitaph section of Color, and its dedication to John Gaston Edgar, further introduce a complicated eroticism to the poem. Edgar, an amateur poet who is thought to be Cullen’s lover, is not mentioned elsewhere in Cullen’s work, and it is assumed their relationship ran its course before the 1925 publication of “For a Poet.” Certainly, its inclusion as an epitaph, so suggestive of burial, and the tone and sentiment of the poem, make it clear that whatever existed between the two men is over, though little bitterness lingers, as Lines 5 and 6 are at pains to make clear. The same cold resignation emanates from this fact: Whatever Cullen and Edgar shared, it is over now, it cannot be. The dream that they may have shared must be put away. Cullen uses the poem to recognize this, but the pain of the repression, the sorrow of his loss, is still acutely obvious.

In a larger sense, the same repression exists without the eroticism. The mention of “Poet” in the title is slightly vague, referring either to Edgar or to Cullen himself. In the latter meaning, the dream of the poem could refer to being a recognized poet, particularly one who is not defined by the biological characteristics of his body, which is something Cullen longed for his entire life. The desire to be a poet who is recognized solely for the quality of his verse is a desire Cullen felt acutely, but his resignation to the fact of racial interpretation is perhaps what precipitates the action of wrapping up his dreams and laying them away in a box of gold.

Racial Segregation

The resignation in the poem seems peculiar to Cullen’s own circumstances. Though he would often claim his poetry reached beyond race, many of Cullen’s most personal and lyrical poems directly deal with race and the lived experiences of African Americans. His struggle to find a place outside of his identity as a racialized poet, and his unmistakably African American subject matter, forced him to explore the boundaries of his form, and in turn led to his most striking and successful poems. Despite his intent to be read simply as a poet, rather than as an African American poet, Cullen’s choices distinctively court a racialized reading. The title of his first collection, Color, is a direct evocation of race, and the majority of the poems in the book apprehend race in a straightforward manner with titles like “A Brown Girl Dead,” “To a Brown Boy,” and “Near White.” Striking poems such as “Incident,” in which a speaker, presumably Cullen, recounts a summer trip he took as a child, and that despite the eight month duration of the trip, all he can recall is that in Baltimore a young boy called him the N-word, also unabashedly center race and racialized experience as their subject.

Cullen’s strongest and most famous statement on his own artistic position to the Harlem Renaissance is in the poem “Heritage,” which is the culmination of the first section of Color. The poem that follows this declaration is “For a Poet,” and though it does not directly evoke a racialized existence, its inclusion in the collection and its placement following “Heritage” inevitably suggests a racial intonation to the poem. Through this lens, the poem seems to depict a young African American poet negotiating with themselves, tempering their dreams against the inevitable reaction to their work as an African American poet and not simply as a poet.

Cullen would give himself similar advice in “Heritage,” the stand-out poem of Color, which speaks to the complicated emotions Cullen was dealing with in terms of the desired goal of Négritude and evoking an idealized African past, as well as his personal method of suppression. The poem is an extended meditation on the notion that an African American person carries an echo of the faded Africa from which their ancestors were taken, a concept vital to Négritude, and a directing aesthetic of the Harlem Renaissance. The speaker in “Heritage” is skeptical about these assumptions and angered that such outside conceptions direct the interpretation of their work. Near the end of the long poem, the speaker turns their voice inwards and issues advice similar to that which Cullen features in “For a Poet”: “One thing only must I do: / Quench my pride and cool my blood / Lest I perish in the flood” (Lines 120-22). Both this statement and “I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth, / And laid them away in a box of gold” (Lines 1-2) in “For a Poet” are staged as a form of self-address, a counselling and reaffirming of such necessary actions, and reflect the interior turbulence that Cullen masked with his reserved lines and European traditions.