Copper Sun - by Countee Cullen

"OUR FLESH THAT WAS A BATTLE-GROUND SHOWS NOW THE MORNING-BREAK": COUNTEE CULLEN'S COPPER SUN, 1927, FEATURING ILLUSTRATIONS BY ART DECO ARTIST CHARLES CULLEN

First trade edition of Cullen's first collected book of poetry after Color (1925)--"unequaled in his talent for creating... the formal poetry of the Harlem Renaissance"--issued along with a signed limited edition, featuring 58 poems including From the Dark Tower and Litany of the Dark People.

"OUR FLESH THAT WAS A BATTLE-GROUND SHOWS NOW THE MORNING-BREAK": COUNTEE CULLEN'S COPPER SUN, 1927, FEATURING ILLUSTRATIONS BY ART DECO ARTIST CHARLES CULLEN

First trade edition of Cullen's first collected book of poetry after Color (1925)--"unequaled in his talent for creating... the formal poetry of the Harlem Renaissance"--issued along with a signed limited edition, featuring 58 poems including From the Dark Tower and Litany of the Dark People.

In Copper Sun, Cullen's second collected book of poetry, he extends his poetic reach. Cullen shared with many Harlem Renaissance writers a belief that work "had social protest as its raison d'etre," yet he also paid tribute to literary forefathers such as Keats and Percy Shelley. "Cullen insisted that while his subject matter might focus on African American life, his poetry was nevertheless part of a long English-language literary tradition" (Wintz & Finkelman, eds. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A-J, 251-52, 85). To Houston Baker, in Copper Sun, "the overriding dichotomy... is one of stasis and change. On the one hand, the poet believes despair is enduring and death the bitter end of all. On the other hand, he sees a better day approaching, the possibility of regeneration and immortality... The seven racial poems in Copper Sun fall generally on the positive side. Though he is now battered and scarred, there is a new day coming for the black American" (Afro-American Poetics, 74). "Cullen was unequaled in his talent for creating... the formal poetry of the Harlem Renaissance" (Wintz & Finkelman, 271). "One of the most brilliant of the young poets of the era between the two World Wars... his roots went very deep into lyric soil" (New York Times). Containing 58 poems: some appearing in journals and magazines such as Harper's, Opportunity, The Crisis, and Vanity Fair.