Poem Incident by Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen Imitation

There was a time in my home town, While living with sister, mom, and brother I lived a life of innocence Not know I was other.

There are thing we can't control In a world of fear and hate. So some just sit back quietly And try not to tempt fate.

Though I still live here in this town I doubt I am the same No child can stay sweet and pure When called a filthy name.

The above poem is modeled after Countee Cullen's poem "Incident" which deals with a young person's reflection on a period in their life when racism impacted them greatly. "Incident" deals with a narrator who, at the age of eight, visited Baltimore, Maryland and had a traumatic moment with a racist "Baltimorean" (line 3). From the text, it is clear that the child was unfamiliar with this kind of attitude because when he sees the man staring at him, the child's reaction is to smile. In return, the man "poked out / His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger'" (lines 7-8). Once exposed to this kind of hatred, it is impossible for a child to return to a place of ignorance and innocence. The narrator shows how he has been changed by the incident at the end of the poem when he says that he went all over Baltimore for more than half a year but that "Of all the things that happened there / That's all that I remember" (lines 11-12). This poem is very interesting because not only does it deal with a psychologically traumatizing incident, but the first of such conversations in the narrator's life.

For my version of the Countee Cullen poem, first I tried to copy the structure. There is no particular meter in the original but there was a bilinear rhyme scheme. The first and third lines of each stanza do not rhyme, but the second and fourth rhyme with one another. I made sure to copy this pattern. The most important thing it seemed to be imitated was the theme of the poem which is the harrowing effects of racism, particularly on young children. This I made sure to include by dealing with this idea of individual as an "other" but not realizing it until it is pointed out to them.

Initially, I considered writing about a specific ethnic group, as Cullen does. His poem is strictly about a young African-American man who deals with a bigot who is not much older than he is. Not only does he have to deal with racism, but the fact that someone as old as himself could be the one to hold these attitudes. It occurred to me that writing about one ethnic group or one minority was insufficient. Cullen wrote about the experience of an African-American boy in Baltimore. That is a very specific incident about the psychological repercussions of racism and prejudice on the innocent. The fact is that every minority ever marginalized group whether they be ostracized for their skin color, for their country of origin, or for their religion is going to have similar experiences. Every Japanese-American child, every Jewish-American child, every Hispanic-American child, will come to a point in their life when they realize they are different from the majority. Usually this awareness will come through a person, like Cullen's white man, who point out this difference in a way that makes it clear to the child that they disapprove of it. To this end, I made the poem about a generalized other; someone who knows that they are different because they were informed of that information and ridiculed for it.