SOURCE: "The Harlem Renaissance," in The Saturday Review, Vol. XXX, No. 12, March 22, 1947, pp. 12-13, 44.

In the following excerpt, Bontemps contrasts Cullen with Langston Hughes, a fellow Harlem Renaissance poet, and offers a reminiscence of Cullen that subsequently became under-quoted.

New books of poems by Langston Hughes and Countée Cullen have appeared this year [Fields of Wonder and On These I Stand, respectively]. Some readers, no doubt, will be reminded of the shy, disarming bows made by these new writers before literary circles back in the twenties, when neither of them had yet finished college. In the case of Cullen, who died a year ago January, there will be a tendency to summarize as well as reflect. His stature as a poet will be estimated. With Hughes, of course, only a tentative and partial measurement can be attempted. But whatever evaluations may follow, whatever ranks and positions may...