Yet+Do+I+Marvel+(Block+12)

"Yet Do I Marvel" I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind, Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair. Inscrutable His ways are, and immune To catechism by a mind too strewn With petty cares to slightly understand What awful brain compels His awful hand. Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! From //Color// by Countee Cullen. Copyright © 1925 Harper & Bros., renewed 1963 by Ida. M Cullen. Quibble= To evade the truth or importance of an issue by raising trivial distinctions and objections. Caprice= A sudden, unpredictable change, as of one's mind or the weather. Catechism= A book giving a brief summary of the basic principles of Christianity in question-and-answer form. Background: __** “Negro poets. . . may have more to gain from the rich background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African inheritance” Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
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Countee Cullen was often criticized for his poems because they were conventional and used the British influence rather than solely an African influence. He was extremely secretive, and even his birth place is unknown as he changed his story of his past constantly. Cullen graduated from Harvard University and was expected to be one of the greatest literary minds, and although his works were awarded, many feel he fell short of his expectation. Countee Cullen would have preferred being known as an Anglo-American writer than as an African-America writer.

As an interesting fact for this poem, Countee spoke out against Christianity because he felt that God could not understand the pain black people felt. http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/cullen.html TANTALUS= A king in classical mythology who, as punishment for having offended the gods, was tortured with everlasting thirst and hunger in Hades. He stood up to his chin in water, but each time he bent to quench his thirst, the water receded. There were boughs heavy with fruit over his head, but each time he tried to pluck them, the wind blew them out of reach. The idea of something “tantalizing” comes from this idea of something desired but put out of reach. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tantalus SISYPHUS= a king in ancient Greece who offended Zeus and whose punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sisyphus Both of these stories are Greek myths involving torturous punishments from the Gods which can be related to the torture Cullen felt was inflicted on black poets as they were told to sing by God, but were prevented by their situation. His overall tone seems to be resentful that God would make a black poet and then “bid him to sing” as it seems like a punishment. He is also sarcastic when he calls God “good, well-meaning, kind” and then at the end he claims he has an “awful hand”.
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- Obstacles  à hard time being nice to God = “ Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!” …… doesn’t understand why God would give man an ability to write and then create people to prevent him from doing that.
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