Countee Cullen's poem Four Epitaphs (VB 157) is a set of four made up epitaphs to people that seem totally unrelated to each other. There is one to his grandmother, one to John Keats, one to Laurence Dunbar, and one to "a lady I know." The epitaph to the grandmother discusses how the grandmother hold a seed, imagining how her offspring with live as her in the coming generations. The John Keats epitaph is mocking Keats' flowery and old-English type writing, while also commenting on Keats' gravestone message, which says, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," meaning that he will not be remembered. Cullen twists those words and says that Keats will definitely be remembered because of the fact that Death himself was burned by fire of Keats. The epitaph for Paul Laurence Dunbar is a direct allusion to Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask," another poem we read in class. This epitaph is acknowledging the struggle that Dunbar depicts in his poem and commending his honor in continuing to stand tall with the mask on. The final epitaph is very different from the others. It is a criticism of the notion that colored angels will have to serve white angels in heaven.
It is interesting that Cullen chose to put these four people together. The reader is assumed to be familiar with Keats and Dunbar, and they are familiar with their own version of the grandmother and lady. There are two women and two men, two black and two white, two famous and two unknown. They all are viewed differently by Cullen. Humble, ,concealed, and racist broadly cover all of the people in society, from Cullen's perspective. Even though the lad y is unspecific, we all someone (at least) who is convinced that racism is based is in religious and/or scientific truth. This collection of epitaphs generalizes all of society with four people. It was no mistake that cullen chose people this different.
Would Ray Durem call Countee Cullen a "pale poet," based on his description in the poem, "To the Pale Poets"? Durem defines a pale poet as someone who doesn't touch the more serious and painful matters of reality because they are afraid to scare people and get blood on the paper they are writing on. Cullen respects the grandmother and uses flowery language to discuss Keats. With the third epitaph, the paleness tarts to fade. No important matters or harsh realities are discussed in the third epitaph, but it does honor and acknowledge an important poem that is most definitely not pale. The fourth epitaph is pointing out an unfortunate reality about the ingrained racist beliefs in society. I think that Durem would call Cullen a pale poet because even though he is talking about reality and real issues in the last two epitaphs, there are no gruesome images or things that would be difficult to read.
