SOURCE: "Keats in Labrador," in Opportunity, Vol. 5, No. 9, September, 1927, pp. 270-71.

In the following review of Copper Sun, Root contends that Cullen's poetry demonstrates a vitality that sets it apart from the predominantly intellectual and lifeless verse of the day.

Modern American poetry has had two chief faults: a hard clear technique; a hard objective content. With brilliant exceptions, like Edna Millay (that tiger, tiger burning bright), or like the grace notes of Robert Frost (that eaglesized lark), it has seldom been poetry that sings and that shines. If it shone—as in Amy Lowell's scissor-blades and patchwork, it did not sing; if it sang—as in the jazz records to be played on the Victrola of Vachel, it did not shine. Much of the rest of it has not been Christian enough to escape the hard intellectuality of Puritanism: like the bleak Pilgrim Fathers, it wears black...