Incident
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.
Short Biography of the Poet:
- Born in 1903 in New York City
- Grown up in a Methodist parsonage.
- Began to compose poetry at the age of fourteen.
- Education Background:
- a)De Witt Clinton High School in New York
- b) New York University (Studied his degree
- c) Harvard University (Completing his Masters)
- Died in 1946
A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Color (1925)
Copper Sun (1927)
My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen (1991)
On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (1947)
The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1928)
The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929)
The Medea and Some Other Poems (1935)
Copper Sun (1927)
My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen (1991)
On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (1947)
The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1928)
The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929)
The Medea and Some Other Poems (1935)
Prose
My Lives and How I Lost Them (1942)
One Way to Heaven (1931)
The Lost Zoo (1940)
One Way to Heaven (1931)
The Lost Zoo (1940)
Drama
Exploration of The Text
(Based on Portable Legacy)
1. What is the nature of the interaction between the two boys?
2. Why does the speaker remember nothing more than the incident, even though he stayed in Baltimore from "May until December"?
The Reading/Writing Connection
1. In a paragraph compare your experience of prejudice with the persona in the poem.
The Reading/Writing Connection
1. In a paragraph compare your experience of prejudice with the persona in the poem.
Ideas for Writing
1. What do its form and rhyme add to this poem?
The form and rhyme adds in a
2. What is the power of language? What are the effects of the use of the term nigger?
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