SOURCE: "Countee Cullen Is a Poet First and a Negro Afterward," in The New York Times Book Review, August 21, 1927, pp. 5, 17.

In the following excerpt, Gorman states that Cullen's poetry transcends racial boundaries.

Countee Cullen's Copper Sun is his second volume and it is encouraging to observe that it reveals a profounder depth than Color. Any exploration of his substance of being will immediately reveal inborn negro impulses disciplined by culture and an awareness of restraint and the more delicate nuances of emotionalized intellect. A primitive naïveté underlies his work, yet, curiously enough, the surface values are sophisticated enough. There are times when he is the more obvious negro poet sentimentalizing about himself and his people, but the admirable aspect of his work is the direct evidence in Copper Sun that he transcends this limitation time and again and becomes sheer poet. What is meant here is that...