SOURCE: "Countee Cullen: A Key to the Puzzle," in The Harlem Renaissance Re-examined, AMS Press, 1987, pp. 213-22.

In the following excerpt, Lomax alleges that Cullen's attitude toward race ultimately stunted his artistic development

Color and Cullen did not entirely escape negative criticism … and significantly it was white reviewers who pointed to Cullen's arch-traditionalism and lack of stylistic originality as major flaws in his work. Locke's review had mentioned Cullen's rhyming, but glossed over it by invoking Pope as the model for what he euphemistically termed "this strange modern skill of sparkling couplets" [Opportunity, January, 1926]. The white reviewers were not, however, so quick to justify Cullen's old-fashioned style. "Perhaps the only protest to Mr. Cullen that one cares to insist on is against his frequent use of rhetorical style which is surely neither instinctive in origin nor agreeable in effect," wrote Poetry's reviewer. "Lofty diction in poetry when...