Cullen, keats, and the privileged liar

And to the night the spear-points of the stars. (9-14)

More complex than the early "To a Brown Girl" and "To a Brown Boy," this poem does not simply tell us to love while we can. It acknowledges that we must do a bit of fooling ourselves in order to love while we can, that there will be some doubts within us as we do this, and that love itself does not necessarily last longer than anything else in life. There is a similar thought in the late sonnet "These are no wind-blown rumors," whose speaker is aware that love, like all else, must end, yet who does not let this bother him:

The speaker is able to maintain a belief he well knows is irrational. It is as if love and illusion work together, one empowering the other. It is interesting that the earth is seen as "false." Perhaps Cullen means "false" in the sense of malicious, or cruel. But perhaps it is an apparent falseness, a perception of falseness brought about by such great "faith" in a love the speaker deep down knows must perish.

Our third type of privileged liars are poets, particularly sensitive to the beauty and pain of mortal life. According to Keats, "with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration" (Letters 1: 194). Poets are attuned to "the principle of beauty in all things" (2: 263). Poets have the most developed imaginations, and, "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -- whether it existed before or not-for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty" (1: 184-5). But poets do more than simply show us beautiful truths; they offer us a respite from the pains of mortal life. From the early "Sleep and Poetry" to the late Fall of Hyperion, Keats's poems explore the figure of a poet-healer, educated by pain but through this pain able to offer poems as a "balm" to his readers.7

Cullen, like Keats, sees poets as uniquely gifted to perceive and appreciate beauty and truth. Houston Baker notes that "his guiding mode was not the realistic but the romantic, and he believed that the poet was a man in tune with higher spiritual forms" (18). Yet these higher forms are, once again, associated with illusions and lies. Poets we meet in Cullen provide illusions that range from idealized stories (or "dreams") to blatant outright untruths. Often, poets are veritable warriors, living life as soldiers in battle, fighting off woes brought on by thoughts of death. Cullen's "The Poet," from Copper Sun, informs us,

Lest any forward thought intrude

Of death and desolation,

Upon a mind shaped but to brood

On wonder and creation,

He keeps an unremittent feud

Against such usurpation. (1-6)

The poet does not simply ignore harsh realities, but he moves beyond them to beautiful hopes:

His ears are tuned to all sharp cries

Of travail and complaining,

His vision stalks a new moon's rise

In every old moon's waning,

And in his heart pride's red flag flies

Too high for sorrow's gaining. (7-12)