For this week’s blog post I chose to write about the poem “Incident” by Countee Cullen. I found that this poem carried themes of racism and messages regarding its negative and lasting impact. However, considering that this was my take away from the poem I found the structure of the poem and way one reads it to be very interesting. In the poem there is no mention of racism or even a suggestion that the significance of the interaction is related to race until line 8 when the child is called a racial slur. In addition, the poem begins in a very light hearted tone mentioning the child’s “glee” and “smile”. I also found it significant that when the child first sees the Baltimorean he only acknowledges his size and age (nothing about race). I found that these details in the beginning of the poem effectively capture the child’s innocence and reveal that at the start of the poem the child does not live everyday in a world where racism is present. However, this dramatically shifts when the child is called a racist slur in line 8.
In the final stanza of the poem the child mentions how during his 7 month visit he saw the “whole of Baltimore”. Both the length of this stay and the size of the city emphasize how big and eventful this experience must have been. However this feeling of largeness and weight is juxtaposed with the smallness of the moment when the child reveals that being called the slur was “all I remember”. Well to some it may seem that this moment was such a small detail as the juxtaposition insinuates, the comparison to the large city actually reveals how big this moment was for the child. I found there to be a dramatic shift in the final 5 lines of the poem. As I mentioned earlier the poem begins with a tone of innocence and joy but after the mention of the slur shifts to depressing and painful. I found this shift to be revealing of the gravity of this situation for the child. Well initially the child did not live everyday experiencing racism, this small moment has opened his eyes to the sad reality of racism’s presence. I found that this dramatic shift for a child so young is revealing of the heavy and long lasting impact of racism and how much it can alter one’s everyday life.
