Day: September 26, 2025

(For Harold Jackman)

What is Africa to me:

Copper sun or scarlet sea,

Jungle star or jungle track,

Strong bronzed men, or regal black

Women from whose loins I sprang

When the birds of Eden sang?

One three centuries removed

From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,

What is Africa to me? 

So I lie, who all day long

Want no sound except the song

Sung by wild barbaric birds

Goading massive jungle herds,

Juggernauts of flesh that pass

Trampling tall defiant grass

Where young forest lovers lie,

Plighting troth beneath the sky.

So I lie, who always hear,

Though I cram against my ear

Both my thumbs, and keep them there,

Great drums throbbing through the air.

So I lie, whose fount of pride,

Dear distress, and joy allied,

Is my somber flesh and skin,

With the dark blood dammed within

Like great pulsing tides of wine

That, I fear, must burst the fine

Channels of the chafing net

Where they surge and foam and fret.

Africa? A book one thumbs

Listlessly, till slumber comes.

Unremembered are her bats

Circling through the night, her cats

Crouching in the river reeds,

Stalking gentle flesh that feeds

By the river brink; no more

Does the bugle-throated roar

Cry that monarch claws have leapt

From the scabbards where they slept.

Silver snakes that once a year

Doff the lovely coats you wear,

Seek no covert in your fear

Lest a mortal eye should see;

What’s your nakedness to me?

Here no leprous flowers rear

Fierce corollas in the air;

Here no bodies sleek and wet,

Dripping mingled rain and sweat,

Tread the savage measures of

Jungle boys and girls in love.

What is last year’s snow to me,

Last year’s anything? The tree

Budding yearly must forget

How its past arose or set—

Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,

Even what shy bird with mute

Wonder at her travail there,

Meekly labored in its hair.

One three centuries removed

From the scenes his fathers loved,

Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,

What is Africa to me? 

So I lie, who find no peace

Night or day, no slight release

From the unremittant beat

Made by cruel padded feet

Walking through my body’s street.

Up and down they go, and back,

Treading out a jungle track.

So I lie, who never quite

Safely sleep from rain at night—

I can never rest at all

When the rain begins to fall;

Like a soul gone mad with pain

I must match its weird refrain;

Ever must I twist and squirm,

Writhing like a baited worm,

While its primal measures drip

Through my body, crying, “Strip!

Doff this new exuberance.

Come and dance the Lover’s Dance!”

In an old remembered way

Rain works on me night and day.

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods

Black men fashion out of rods,

Clay, and brittle bits of stone,

In a likeness like their own,

My conversion came high-priced;

I belong to Jesus Christ,

Preacher of humility;

Heathen gods are naught to me.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

So I make an idle boast;

Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,

Lamb of God, although I speak

With my mouth thus, in my heart

Do I play a double part.

Ever at Thy glowing altar

Must my heart grow sick and falter,

Wishing He I served were black,

Thinking then it would not lack

Precedent of pain to guide it,

Let who would or might deride it;

Surely then this flesh would know

Yours had borne a kindred woe.

Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,

Daring even to give You

Dark despairing features where,

Crowned with dark rebellious hair,

Patience wavers just so much as

Mortal grief compels, while touches

Quick and hot, of anger, rise

To smitten cheek and weary eyes.

Lord, forgive me if my need

Sometimes shapes a human creed.

All day long and all night through,

One thing only must I do:

Quench my pride and cool my blood,

Lest I perish in the flood.

Lest a hidden ember set

Timber that I thought was wet

Burning like the dryest flax,

Melting like the merest wax,

Lest the grave restore its dead.

Not yet has my heart or head

In the least way realized

They and I are civilized.

🌍 Theme 1: Cultural Identity and Displacement: In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, the central question—“What is Africa to me?”—echoes the speaker’s painful struggle with his cultural identity. As a Black man born in America, Cullen’s speaker feels emotionally and physically disconnected from the continent of his ancestry. He reflects on Africa in rich imagery—“Copper sun,” “scarlet sea,” “spicy grove, cinnamon tree”—but admits these are not lived experiences. His relationship with Africa is filtered through romanticized imagination and inherited memory. The refrain “One three centuries removed / From the scenes his fathers loved” highlights the temporal and spiritual distance from his roots. The speaker is aware of the ancestral blood that runs through him—“my somber flesh and skin”—yet he cannot fully grasp the land or culture it came from. The poem illustrates the condition of the African diaspora: longing for a homeland that feels mythical, abstract, and irretrievably lost due to history and displacement.

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🔥 Theme 2: Inner Conflict Between Christianity and Ancestral Beliefs: In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, the speaker experiences a deep spiritual conflict between his Christian faith and the ancestral gods of Africa. He acknowledges his religious identity with lines like “I belong to Jesus Christ, / Preacher of humility,” but this declaration is immediately followed by doubt and longing: “Wishing He I served were Black.” The speaker yearns for a deity who reflects his racial identity and suffering. He confesses, “Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,” revealing how his imagination creates a spiritual bridge between African heritage and Christian belief. This internal division is also seen in his ironic assertion that “Heathen gods are naught to me,” even as he crafts emotional and spiritual representations of them. The Christian trinity—“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”—is juxtaposed with ancient African deities made of “rods, clay, and brittle bits of stone.” Cullen’s speaker is torn between inherited faith and ancestral spirituality, unable to reconcile them.

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🌧️ Theme 3: Repressed Emotion and Psychological Turmoil: In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, emotional repression is depicted as a nearly physical condition. The speaker’s inner turmoil manifests in disturbing bodily images: “So I lie, whose fount of pride, / Dear distress, and joy allied, / Is my somber flesh and skin.” He describes the sensation of drums pounding within him, symbolizing the repressed power of his ancestral memory. The poetic voice is haunted day and night by the rhythm of “cruel padded feet / Walking through my body’s street.” This relentless psychological unrest suggests a kind of postcolonial trauma—ancestral energy and cultural pride that has been suppressed by societal expectations and religious doctrine. The metaphor “Like great pulsing tides of wine” represents the potent, dangerous force of racial identity under pressure. Cullen’s speaker is aware that if he fails to “quench [his] pride and cool [his] blood,” it may consume him, revealing the cost of denying one’s heritage and emotional truth.

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🎭 Theme 4: Duality of Pride and Shame in Black Identity: In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, the speaker wrestles with conflicting emotions—pride in his Black identity and shame instilled by a society that devalues it. He calls his skin a “fount of pride, dear distress,” blending opposing emotions into one complex legacy. There is pride in lineage, in “strong bronzed men” and “regal black women,” yet also shame in the way this identity is treated and suppressed in Western society. The speaker cannot fully embrace his heritage without also confronting societal rejection and internalized inferiority. The poem’s rhythm and repetition reflect his inability to resolve this tension. He imagines “Lamb of God” with “dark rebellious hair,” a vision born of both defiance and pain. The line “Lest the grave restore its dead” warns of a buried identity ready to erupt. Cullen illustrates how Black identity in a colonial world is marked by contradiction—both a source of strength and a site of ongoing psychological struggle.

🌍 1. How does Countee Cullen use nature imagery to express the speaker’s relationship with Africa in “Heritage”?

In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, nature imagery becomes the foundation for exploring the speaker’s estranged connection to his ancestral homeland. Africa is imagined through lush, sensory language—“Copper sun or scarlet sea, / Jungle star or jungle track”—portraying it as a place of primal beauty and spiritual origin. These natural elements are vibrant, but they are not grounded in personal memory. Instead, they illustrate how the speaker’s view of Africa is filtered through imagination, historical distance, and cultural inheritance. He asks repeatedly, “What is Africa to me?”—suggesting that despite these vivid images, his understanding remains abstract and unresolved. The speaker is “three centuries removed / From the scenes his fathers loved,” highlighting generational disconnection. Nature in the poem functions as both a symbol of Africa’s grandeur and a reminder of the speaker’s alienation from it. Cullen uses this rich imagery to show how identity rooted in a distant homeland can be beautiful yet painfully intangible.

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🔥 2. In what ways does the speaker experience a spiritual crisis in “Heritage”?

In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, the speaker’s spiritual crisis emerges from a clash between his Christian upbringing and his African heritage. He affirms his religious identity—“I belong to Jesus Christ”—yet follows with the line “Wishing He I served were Black,” exposing an inner conflict rooted in racial and spiritual dissonance. Cullen highlights how the speaker struggles to find belonging in a faith tradition historically used to oppress his people. This tension intensifies as he imagines a divine figure with “dark rebellious hair” and “smitten cheek and weary eyes,” reimagining Christ in a racial image that reflects his own experience. The speaker even admits, “Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,” symbolizing a desperate need to reconcile his identity with his faith. His struggle is not just theological but deeply personal—between worship and representation, belief and belonging. Cullen uses this internal rift to expose the psychological cost of being caught between two spiritual worlds.

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🌧️ 3. What role does sound—especially the image of drums—play in conveying the speaker’s inner turmoil in “Heritage”?

In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, sound, particularly the repeated image of drums, becomes a powerful expression of ancestral memory and psychological unrest. The speaker is haunted by “great drums throbbing through the air,” a sound that echoes the cultural rhythms of Africa. This auditory motif represents a past that refuses to be silenced—“Though I cram against my ear / Both my thumbs… So I lie.” The drums are relentless, symbolizing how deeply embedded heritage is in his consciousness. Cullen uses sound as more than background noise—it becomes the poem’s pulse, a reminder of identity that cannot be ignored or repressed. The speaker’s body becomes a vessel for this rhythm—“Walking through my body’s street,”—suggesting that cultural memory is visceral and inescapable. The sound of the drums mirrors the speaker’s internal unrest, linking emotional tension with ancestral calling. Through this, Cullen illustrates how heritage can live on as an unrelenting force within the self.

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🕊️ 4. How does Cullen portray the duality of pride and shame in Black identity in “Heritage”?

In “Heritage” by Countee Cullen, the speaker’s portrayal of Black identity reveals an emotional duality—both pride in his cultural roots and shame imposed by societal forces. He refers to his “somber flesh and skin” as a source of “pride, dear distress, and joy allied,” recognizing the complexity of carrying a racial identity shaped by both ancestral strength and historical oppression. He admires his lineage—“Strong bronzed men, or regal black / Women from whose loins I sprang”—yet fears the consequences of embracing it too openly: “Lest a hidden ember set / Timber that I thought was wet.” This metaphor of suppressed fire shows the danger he associates with unrestrained racial pride in a society that demands restraint. Cullen’s speaker is constantly negotiating this balance, trying to “quench [his] pride and cool [his] blood.” The poem powerfully captures how pride in Blackness coexists with internalized fear and generational trauma.

🌸 The Rejection of Historical Burden: The poem “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley immediately enters into a dialectical struggle against the hereditary yoke of historical precedent. The poet’s hermeneutic is a radical one, positing that the child’s existence is not an emblem of past conflict. It is a striking subversion of the conventional poetic narrative to state, with such declarative force, “You were not a provision of armistice or treaty.” By divorcing the subject from the grand, often tragic, narratives of global friction and the brutal legacies of “slave” ships and colonial exploits, Oxley liberates her child from a predetermined, politically charged existence. This denial of historical patrimony is not a form of amnesia but a powerful aesthetic act of creation, establishing a new, unburdened genesis. The daughter’s body becomes a site of simple, universal truth, unburdened by the weight of inherited trauma.

🌻 The Affirmation of Existential Autonomy: The poem “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley profoundly articulates a subject’s triumph over imposed collective identity. The daughter is not relegated to a symbolic role, nor is her being a vessel for an entire “nation or diaspora.” Oxley’s poetic voice grants her daughter an existential autonomy that transcends the deterministic forces of lineage and group consciousness. The poem culminates in the apotheosis of personal belonging, declaring “Your homeland is wherever you stand.” This line is not merely a statement of physical presence but a philosophical assertion of self-possession. It is a sublime rejection of external definitions, securing for the individual an aesthetic and spiritual sovereignty over their own identity, independent of any inherited communal narrative that would seek to define her by race, history, or political struggle.

🌹 The Primacy of Affection over Ancestry: The central struggle of “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley is to establish the aesthetic and moral superiority of private affection over public history. The poet’s exquisite juxtaposition pits the domestic simplicity of “clink of pan / on stove, scraping-back of chair” against the monumental, often violent, historical forces that seek to claim the daughter’s identity. This choice is a lyrical act of rebellion, asserting that the most profound and authentic origin story is not one of “armistice or treaty” but of simple, human love. The poem insists that this intimate genesis is the truest foundation, untainted by the complex and often sordid narratives of “explorer[s]” and “slave[s],” creating a sacred space for the child’s being that exists outside the confines of historical determinism and societal expectations.

🌷 The Subversion of the External Gaze: The poetic project of “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley is to dismantle the oppressive weight of the external gaze. The opening lines “Some people stare, / searching for a Judas bone,” immediately confront the critical and judgmental eye of a world seeking to find a flaw or a mark of perceived betrayal. However, this gaze is rendered impotent, as it can only apprehend the “usual things” of the body—the “stems of your arms” and the “plunge of femur into socket.” The poem shifts the focus from the scrutinizing stare to the daughter’s own dignified presence. The final image of her spine, “straighter than the fence lines at Gettysburg,” not only rejects the historical narrative of conflict but also represents a defiance of the gaze itself, asserting an unbreakable, personal rectitude that cannot be compromised by external judgment.

1. How does the poem subvert the traditional role of a “historical burden” on identity?

“Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley enters a fierce and necessary dialectic against the deterministic weight of history. The poem’s most profound aesthetic act is its outright repudiation of a past that would seek to define the subject. Oxley refuses to allow her daughter to be a mere symbol or a living document of conflict, declaring with stunning finality, “You were not a provision of armistice or treaty.” This powerful negation transcends the anxieties of inherited historical trauma. The poem’s aesthetic triumph lies in its ability to liberate its subject from a burdened lineage, asserting a fresh and unencumbered origin. The final image of the daughter’s spine “straighter than the fence lines at Gettysburg” is a brilliant rhetorical move, transforming a symbol of historical fracture into one of unbending, personal rectitude that is utterly independent of collective memory and societal expectations.

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2. In what way does the poem establish the primacy of love over inherited history?

In “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley, the poet constructs a profound hierarchy of values, placing the intimate, private act of love above the monumental, often brutal, narratives of history. The poem’s aesthetic power lies in its juxtaposition of the “simple as the sounds at breakfast” with the immense weight of historical crimes. By framing the daughter’s creation not through “slave” ships or the violent incursions of the “explorer,” but through the mundane grace of a home, Oxley posits that the true patrimony is not one of inherited conflict but of personal affection. This is not a denial of history’s reality but a lyrical assertion that the most valid origin story is one of pure, unburdened love, creating a sacred space for the child’s being that is unassailable by the trauma of ancestry.

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3. What is the significance of the poem’s focus on the human body’s “usual things”?

The formalist elegance of “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley resides in its aesthetic focus on the body’s “usual things.” The opening stanza, which dismisses those “searching for a Judas bone,” performs a crucial subversion of the external, judgmental gaze. The poet deliberately grounds the poem in the unexceptional physicality of “the stems of your arms, / the sleek plunge of femur into socket.” This attention to fundamental human anatomy is a powerful refutation of any attempt to exoticize or politicize the biracial body. By insisting on the universality of these bodily forms, the poem asserts an identity that is profoundly human before it is anything else, making its claim for normalcy its most radical and aesthetically compelling statement and demonstrating the subject’s inherent value.

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4. How does the poem’s apostrophe to the daughter function as a rhetorical and aesthetic choice?

The sustained apostrophe in “Biracial” by Carolyn Oxley is not merely a rhetorical device but the very engine of the poem’s aesthetic and emotional power. By addressing the work “for my daughter,” Oxley establishes an intimate, conversational tone that bypasses external judgment and creates a private, protected sphere for the subject. This direct address allows the poet to perform a series of profound negations and affirmations, declaring “You were not… ” and “Your homeland is wherever / you stand” as if speaking a sacred, personal truth. The apostrophe transforms the poem into a protective utterance, a lyrical shield against the societal gaze. It is a canonical example of a poet using form to create an inviolable, self-contained world for their subject, demonstrating the ultimate authority of the poetic voice.

📚 Books

• Oxley, Carolyn. What is a Woman. Finishing Line Press, 2008.
• Spickard, Paul R. Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America. University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

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📄 Academic Articles

• Rockquemore, Kerry Ann, and David L. Brunsma. “Socially Embedded Identities: Theories, Typologies, and Processes of Racial Identity among Black/White Biracials.” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 2, 2002, pp. 335–356. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2002.tb00052.x
• Rockquemore, Kerry Ann, and David L. Brunsma. “Racing to Theory or Retheorizing Race? Understanding the Struggle to Build a Multiracial Identity Theory.” Journal of Social Issues, vol. 65, no. 1, 2009, pp. 13–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01585.x
• Rockquemore, Kerry Ann. “Opting for White: Choice, Fluidity, and Racial Identity.” Sociological Inquiry, vol. 72, no. 3, 2002, pp. 408–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-682X.00025
• Brunsma, David L. “The New Color Complex: Appearances and Biracial Identity.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, vol. 1, no. 3, 2001, pp. 225–246. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532706XID0103_03

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🌐 Poem Websites

• Poetry Foundation. poetryfoundation.org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
• Poets.org. poets.org. https://poets.org/