http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/cullen.html
The use of poetry to express dissatisfaction with the status quo continued in the work of the Harlem Renaissance poets. Countee Cullen reflects this frustration in the signature lines from his best known poem, "Yet Do I Marvel":
"Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!" (13-14).
Like Dunbar, Cullen's desire was to be recognized, not as a "Negro poet," but simply as a "poet," and he invested much of his energy in developing his craft as a formalist poet in the vein of Keats and Shelley. Included in Cullen's poetry of resistance to limitation is the poem "Heritage," in which he essentially denies any connection to an Africa homeland. Although filled with self-pity and what is recognized today as "internalized racism," Cullen's work achieves a kind of peak in its ability to voice what Johnson called "the quintessence of race-consciousness":
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me? (1-10)
Although the poem questions the significance of an African heritage, it nonetheless embodies Sankofa. Cullen still looks backward, to the legacy he claims is irrelevant, for insight into to his present condition.