my favorite poem

poetry allows you to see into people's souls. but not in a creepy way.

here is a tiny slice of mine. i have loved this poem for years because cullen employs the shakespearean sonnet to its fullest extent, making the content of "yet do i marvel" reverberate with irony. iambic pentameter stresses the words that should be most emphasized in this poem (consider the stresses of the opening line: doubt, god, good, mean, kind) and offers a subtle backdrop that reinforces the poem's overall content. this is the kind of craftsmanship that brings my mind to its knees. more importantly, in choosing to write constantly in shakespearean sonnets, cullen proved to those who doubted the intellectual and artistic capacity of african-americans that not only could he write as well a dead white guy, but he could push the form to transcend its status as refuge for unrequited love to a higher ground for expressing paradoxical, theological issues that are intrinsic to humanity. reconciling the notion of an omnipotent god with all the suffering in the world is the kind of stuff that keeps scholars busy for a lifetime, yet cullen manages to express himself with perfect eloquence in a mere 14 lines. enjoy.

Countee Cullen

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 someday 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 brains compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!