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Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
Countée Cullen
| Submitted Date |
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Friday, January 03, 2003 |
| Submitted Date |
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Thursday, October 27, 2011 |
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Read poems about / on: remember, heart, smile
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Comments about this poem (Incident
by
Countée Cullen
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Brittney Ware (5/9/2010 1:59:00 PM)
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Ned Coates, you are an idiot. 'Whit' means a particle or a bit. Like when you say a smidge of something.
Stop making stuff up. It makes you look stupid.
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Sara S (11/24/2009 1:26:00 PM)
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an awesome poem for anyone black or white.... ned coates I don't see revenge or anger or whatever in any of this, it seems like putting it in makes the poet sound bad or mean which i don't get from this
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Lamont Palmer (8/13/2009 5:02:00 AM)
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One of the few poems that I have always been able to recite from memory since reading it at the age of sixteen. A simple but poignant poem, exemplifying how racism can be a powerful and destructive force. Cullen is one of the (underrated) masters. -LP
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Ned Coates (1/19/2009 8:14:00 PM)
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I would also add that the choice of 'May until December' is symbolic of a transition from callow youth to the chill of disillusionment, a strong note of pathos. Like Holden Caufield, the speaker could be telling this to a shrink.
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Ned Coates (1/19/2009 8:05:00 PM)
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When I first read this poem years ago, it had immediate shock value, with the speaker of the poem as total victim and the reader suffering vicariously. Upon reading it again years later, knowing the sharp reversal of stanza two, I looked at other aspects of the poem, realizing that obviously the speaker is not an eight-year-old child but an adult, likely the poet himself. In this second view, one can see that this simple-looking poem is really one of revenge. If we put '-an' onto 'Baltimore, ' we get the sound of balta-moron. The antagonist is a racist moron. Also he is not a whit-i.e., wit-bigger than than the speaker but is now a moron of little wit (an emphatic redundancy) . The incident took place in the whole-that is, the hole-of Baltimore, likely meaning what we mean when we say, 'That place is a hole! ' Let us hope that this incident in 'old Baltimore' is not representative of the city today, which I have found quite enjoyable to visit. Perhaps there are more puns in the poem, or perhaps I'm trying too hard. But it is this second reading that that moved me to give the poem a ten.
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Chaotic Life -Curly M. (2/19/2008 10:14:00 AM)
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that poem was great! !
but baltimore is rude
lol, still a great poem
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