"Yet Do I Marvel" A Poetry Analysis Of Countee Cullen

Yet Do I Marvel By Countee Cullen I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,And did He stoop to quibble could tell why The little buried mole continues blind,    Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, Make plain the reason tortured  Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit,  declare    If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair.    Inscrutable His ways are, and immune    To catechism by a mind too strewn    With petty cares to slightly understand    What awful brain compels His awful hand.    Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:    To make a poet black, and bid him sing! Countee Cullen(1903-1946) (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/yet-do-i-marvel/)

In this poem Countee Cullen uses allusions* and enjambment** to explore the idea of God's incomprehensible nature and illustrate the poet's confusion at why he was made a poet in a time period that didn't accept him.      The poet uses enjambment to "jam up" the flow of the stanzas and show his confusion at why God causes hardship if he is "good, well-meaning,/kind". The physical sensation of stop and start at each line break contributes to this feeling of confusion because it gives the reader a sense of incompletion. It also builds up the anticipation of the speaker questioning God's "will". He doesn't think God is bad but he wonders why he would make a world with so many hardships and cruelties. This apparent in the way the poet enjambed the lines of the poem. It continues a feeling of confusion and frustration. "Why flesh that mirrors/Him must someday die."In the poem Cullen reflect that if God made man in "his" image why does God allow men to die.       The speaker alludes to specific stories in Greek mythology in order to illustrate the hardships people face. "Make plain the reason tortured,/ Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit." The speaker refers to the story of Tantalus(http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/tantalus.html) and his own eternal struggle to achieve his desires, in order to question why God tempts men with things they cannot have. Similarly, when the poet references "Sisyphus" (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/sisyphus.html) he is wondering whether unpredictability "dooms" him "to struggle up a never-ending stair", to never accomplish what he is capable of. The speaker of the poem wonders if God really has a reason for causing difficulty and starts to wonder if there is a higher power controlling people's fates. Tantalus struggling to reach the fruit        In the last two lines of the poem the speaker states "Yet I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black and bid him sing." In saying this the speaker "marvels" at the fact that God would be so cruel as to make him black and a poet in the 1920's when racism was so prominent.      This poem explores themes of racism but it doesn't necessarily cover any of the Harlem Renaissance themes( e.i. identification with race, pride, history/culture, etc). The poet talks about racism and his struggle with being a black poet but he doesn't seem resentful. The overall tone is questioning but not really angry. The poet seems to be in a state of wonderment and surprise that God would allow people to suffer but he doesn't seem enraged. *Allusion: a reference to a (generally well-known) historic, mythic, or literary person, place or event. **Enjambment: the use of run-on lines in poetry. Instead of stopping or pausing at the end of a line of poetry, we have to carry on reading until we complete the meaning in a later line.