Color
Color is Countee Cullen's first published book and color is "in every sense its prevailing characteristic."[21] Cullen discusses heavy topics regarding race and the distance of one's heritage from their motherland and how it is lost. It has been said that his poems fall into a variety of categories: those that with no mention were made of color. Secondly, the poems that circled around the consciousness of African Americans and how being a "Negro in a day like this" in America is very cruel.[21] Through Cullen's writing, readers can view his own subjectivity of his inner workings and how he viewed the Negro soul and mind. He discusses the psychology of African Americans in his writings and gives an extra dimension that forces the reader to see a harsh reality of Americas past time. "Heritage" is one of Countee Cullen's best-known poems published in this book. Although it is published in Color, it originally appeared in The Survey, March 1, 1925. Count Cullen wrote "Heritage" during a time when African-American artists were dreaming of Africa.[38] During the Harlem Renaissance, Cullen, Hughes, and other poets were using their creative energy trying fuse Africa into the narrative of their African-American lives. In "Heritage", Cullen grapples with the separation of his African culture and history created by the institution of slavery.[38] To Cullen, Africa was not a place of which he had personal knowledge. It was a place that he knew through someone else's description, passed down through generations.[39] Africa was a place of heritage. Throughout the poem, he struggles with the cost of the cultural conversion and religious conversion of his ancestors when they were away "torn from Africa".[39]
The Black Christ
The Black Christ was a collection of poems published at the height of Cullen's career in 1929. The poems examine the relationship of faith and justice among African Americans. In some of the poems, Cullen equates the suffering of Christ in his crucifixion and the suffering of African Americans.[40] This collection poems captures Cullen's idealistic aesthetic of race pride and religious skepticism.[41] The Black Christ also takes a close look at the racial violence in America during the 1920s.[40] By the time Cullen published this book of poetry, the concept of the Black Messiah was prevalent in other African-American writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude Mackay, and Jean Toomer.[41]
Copper Sun
Copper Sun is a collection of poetry published in New York in 1927. The collection examines the sense of love, particularly a love or unity between white and black people. In some poems, love is ominous and leads to death. However, in general, the love extends not only to people but to natural elements such as plants, trees, etc. Many of the poems also link the concept of love to a Christian background. Yet, Cullen was also attracted to something both pagan as well as Christian. in one of his poems "One Day We Played a Game", the theme of love appears. The speaker calls: "'First love! First love!' I urged". (The poem portrays love as necessary to continue in life and that it is basic to life as the corner stone or the fundamental of building home.) Similarly, in "Love's Way", Cullen's poem portrays a love that shares and unifies the world. The poem suggests that "love is not demanding, all, itself/ Withholding aught; love's is nobler way/ of courtesy" . In the poem, the speaker contends that "Love rehabilitates unto the end." Love fixes itself, regrows, and heals.[42]
The Medea and Some Poems
Poetry collections
- Color, Harper & Brothers, 1925; Ayer, 1993, ISBN 978-0881431551 (includes the poems "Incident", "Near White", "Heritage", and others), illustrations by Charles Cullen
- Copper Sun, Harper & Brothers, 1927
- Harlem Wine (1926)
- The Ballad of the Brown Girl, Harper & Brothers, 1927, illustrations by Charles Cullen
- The Black Christ and Other Poems, Harper & Brothers, 1929, illustrations by Charles Cullen
- Tableau (1925)
- One Way to Heaven, Harper & Brothers, 1932
- Any Human to Another (1934)
- The Medea and Some Other Poems (1935)
- On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947
- Gerald Lyn Early (ed.), My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Doubleday, 1991, ISBN 978-0385417587
- Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, Library of America, 2013, ISBN 978-1598530834
Prose
- One Way to Heaven (1931)
- The Lost Zoo, Harper & Brothers, 1940; Modern Curriculum Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0813672175
- My Lives and How I Lost Them, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1942
Drama
- St. Louis Woman (1946)
