For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

Cullen entered Harvard in 1925 to pursue a masters in English about the same time his first collection of poems Color was publiCountee Cullend. In 1940 Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson whom he had known for ten years. Cullen competed in a poetry contest sponsored by Opportunity.

(He pronounced his name "Coun-tay" not "Coun-tee. ").