This is one of the best short poems that I’ve ever come across, I think. It perfectly captures the peculiar nature of childhood memory against a backdrop of racism. There isn’t a single word here that’s out of place (I’m a florid writer myself, and so I like minimalism). People sometimes say that this poem is “over-quoted,” but I don’t think that this alone takes away from the experience of reading it. As Langston Hughes wrote, poetry like this addresses “the problems of freedom in a white dominated society.”
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.– Countee Cullen.
Natalia A. 