Vivian Narayan

Countee Cullen & Langston Hughes: Same Goal, Different Paths

Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes were undoubtedly two of the most prominent
figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Like most poets of the Harlem Renaissance, these two men
exemplified African American literary excellence while directly communicating contrasting
feelings and emotions toward the white dominant culture. The era in which they were writing
almost explicitly made African Americans choose whether or not to embrace their culture to hold
a specific place in American society. At first, the distinction between Cullen and Hughes seems
obvious. Each of Cullens and Hughess writing styles draw from following different paths in the
American writing tradition and give the messages different implications. Hughes and Cullen
both presented themselves as poets who had accepted their African American culture but were
also vying to be accepted by American culture as well. African Americans were determining their
heritage afresh and attempting to bring knowledge of this heritage to the white dominant society.
The differences in Cullens and Hughess poetic styles reflects each of their ideologies
regarding the state that African Americans were put in at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Countee Cullens poetic style is controlled and restrained. Langston Hughes deploys various
poetic styles to directly voice unswerving opinions. Although delivery and construction of the
messages are extremely dissimilar, the evidence of their like-minded opposition to the dominant
culture is clearly apparent in both poets writings.
Countee Cullens writing style is the one that our society labels as more traditional.
Cullen preferred traditional styles and even unashamedly rejected many forms of poetic
experimentation during the Harlem Renaissance (Mullen, 38). He saw poetry as an art form with
already-established guidelines and felt that various forms of experimentation were not genuine
poetry. Meter and rhyme were very prevalent features in his works as was common with

conventional white American and British poets as well (Ferguson,32). He also seemed to favor
emotional and personal artistic themes rather than direct, provocative themes that poets like
Hughes would have chosen to articulate the prevailing views of the New Negro. His influences
were drawn predominantly from Western poets and he did not use influences of the black home
space, black music and black culture in his writing style. Overall, Cullens aesthetics developed
from the conventions of classical Western literature with enigmatic allusions and structured
rhyme schemes. In comparison to Hughes, the differences in writing style are very apparent just
through visual and auditory evaluation.