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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Confession<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Countee Cullen <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If for a day joy masters me,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Think not my wounds are healed; <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Far deeper than the scars you see,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I keep the roots concealed. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>They shall bear blossoms with the fall;<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I have their word for this, <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Who tend my roots with rains of gall,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>And suns of prejudice.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 15, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Countee Cullen<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>1903–1946<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Countee Cullen was born Countee LeRoy Porter on May 30, 1903, likely in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York City and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen. When he was fifteen, he was unofficially adopted by F. A. Cullen, the minister of a Methodist church in Harlem.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Cullen entered New York University after high school. Around the same time, his poems were published in The Crisis, under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity, a magazine published by the National Urban League. Cullen was soon after published in Harper’s, the Century Magazine, and Poetry. He won several awards for his poem, “Ballad of the Brown Girl,” and graduated from New York University in 1925. That same year, he published his first volume of verse, Color (Harper & Bros., 1925), and was admitted to Harvard University, where he completed an MA in English.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Cullen went on to publish several more poetry collections, including On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (Harper & Bros., 1947); The Black Christ and Other Poems (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1929); Copper Sun (Harper & Bros., 1927), and the seminal anthology Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Black Poets of the Twenties (Harper & Brothers, 1927). An imaginative lyric poet, Cullen wrote in the<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>Ann M. Chiappetta, M.S.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'>Making Meaningful ConnectionsThrough Media <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>914.393.6605 USA<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="mailto:Anniecms64@gmail.com">Anniecms64@gmail.com</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>All things Annie: <a href="http://www.annchiappetta.com">www.annchiappetta.com</a> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>