A Rhetoric Analysis Of Countee Cullen's Yet Do I Marvel

Literature has long been difficult to understand, an author’s use of rhetoric can be analyzed to have many different significances as well as meanings. Poetry is particularly difficult to analyze, thus many writers and critics have created their own arguments for the meaning of different pieces. As literary critics and scholars ourselves, we in this English 100W class must determine what arguments we find valid, and which arguments give us deeper insight on pieces that we read and study. One of such works is Countee Cullen’s Yet Do I Marvel, Cullen’s poem, though simple and short, contains in it masterfully used rhetoric that many have tried to derive meaning from. Critics who have analyzed the poem comment both on its use as a commentary
on race as well as religion, others express that it is his lament of being “a poet and black” while some other critics insist that his implied irony expresses his blessing as a black poet. The true analysis, however, is how all of those different ideas come together to form the poem’s complete meaning. Let us begin with the theme of race consciousness, generally derived by the last couplet in Cullen’s poem stating:
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”
Countee Cullen, as an author of the Harlem renaissance, wrote particularly on the idea of race and color, one of his books has even been titled Color and contains in it such poems as: “To a Brown Girl,” “To a Brown Boy,” “Black Magadalens,” “A Brown Girl Dead, “Bread and Wine,” “Wisdom Cometh with the Years,” “Threnody for a Brown Girl,” and “The Shroud of Color.” All of which pays tribute to the author’s awareness of color and the difference it made in America (Reimherr, 1963).
Reimherr states that “There was a tension between Cullen 's desire to be purely a lyric poet and his feelings of race-consciousness.” Thus, this idea insists the poem “Yet Do I Marvel” and its earlier presented lines to express the meaning: “When one is oppressed for a difference beyond his control, how can he sing” (Reimherr), stressing the idea that Cullen at times lamented and was frustrated by the differences set by race, particularly him being black. In an essence Reimherr states that the poem is Cullen’s questioning of the racial differences in society, and therefore a representation of his race consciousness which leads him to question why God puniHes him in such a way as to make him a poet and
black. Contrary to Reimherr, Fredrick Fetrow states that Cullen’s poem is “widely misinterpreted” as poem about the “lament(s) of a defeated soul, [and] a complaint by a man unable to resolve the dilemma of being black and a poet.” He states instead that the poem uses irony and paradoxes as a way to state that Cullen’s poem actually means to justify that he is blessed as a black poet (Fetrow, 1939).
Fetrow expresses that the lines that question why God has puniHed his creatures are actually ironic statements which insist that God has given them means of survival. The mole is blind because he does not require sight to live in his environment, that sight may actually be a hindrance. Humans made of flesh in God’s image only die physical, but survive spiritually with God, thus another means of survival beyond the grave (Fetrow, 1939). His analysis is an interesting contradiction to
Reimherr’s. Reimherr derives his meaning of Yet Do I Marvel by speculating on a long line of other works written by Cullen that would prove his race consciousness and laments as a black poet, while Fetrow takes directly from the poem itself and states that Cullen’s poem is in actuality ironic. Though both seem to differ completely, their analysis can be used to compile a deeper understanding of the text. Cullen’s poem both presents frustration, but also justification for God’s actions. It is not assured that he feels blessed to be black and a poet as Fetrow would state, but it seems true that he believes God to have his reasons though the poet himself does not understand. While on the other hand, Reimherr is also correct, it is easy to see through his previous works as well as Yet Do I Marvel that the poet is conscious of the inequality and discrimination pitted on his race and understand that being black is not simply just a tone of skin color, but rather a mark of a great struggle. Whether or not he laments the fact that he is black, however, is unclear. In consideration of both critics, we are able to take not their entire conclusion, but pieces of reasoning behind their claims. Yet Do I Marvel contains in it the poet’s consciousness of inequality and race, his frustration with his struggle, while at the same time justifies that there must be a good reason why he is black and a poet, and thus it must not be a hindrance a like how the mole is blind for reason. The poem then can be understood as Cullen’s attempt to give purpose to his struggle as a poet, and justify his struggle against the predetermined hardship against him due to his skin color.

Works Cited:
Fetrow, Fred M. "Cullen 's 'Yet Do I Marvel '." Explicator 56.2 (1998): 103-105. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 6 Mar. 2013.
Reimherr, Beulah. "Race Consciousness in Countee Cullen 's Poetry." Susquehanna University Studies 7.2 (June 1963): 65-82. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Mar. 2013.