Born Countee Leroy Porter on 30 May 1903, Countee Cullen was orphaned while still a child and subsequently adopted, though the relationship was never made legal, by Frederick Asbury Cullen. While an air of mystery--apparently maintained by the poet himself--surrounds the earliest years of Cullen's life, the facts of his biography following adoption by the Reverend Mr. Cullen are well-documented. Study at DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City where Cullen first began to write poetry, was followed by attendance at New York University, from which he graduated in 1925. In the fall of 1925 Cullen enrolled for graduate work at Harvard and finished an M.A. in literature the following summer, having already published his first book, Color (1925). After a brief episode as an assistant editor of Opportunity , Cullen received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1928 for a year of study and writing in Paris, and his lifelong fascination with French language...