Cynthia Davis, Verner D. Mitchell: Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney (Texas Tech University Press, 2024)

Sometime in 1925 two young Black poets met by chance in Washington, D.C. One was Waring Cuney, the other one Langston Hughes who wrote about the meeting in his 1940 autobiography, The Big Sea: “One day on a streetcar in Washington, I first met Waring Cuney. He had a Chicago Defender, oldest American Negro newspaper, in his hand, and my picture was in the Defender with the announcement of the forthcoming publication of The Weary Blues. Cuney looked from the picture to me, then asked if I were one and the same. I said yes. Then he said he wrote poetry, too.”

Hughes and Cuney would become life-long friends. Langston Hughes (1901-1967) would go on to become a star of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, The Weary Blues (Knopf, 1926) the first of his numerous books of poetry, fiction, drama, non-fiction, autobiography, and anthologies.

Waring Cuney (1906-1976) has been almost forgotten.  His first book of poetry, Puzzles, came out in 1960 in a very limited edition, published in Utrecht, Holland, for a Dutch bibliophile society. The second, Storefront Church, a chapbook of eighteen poems, was published in London in 1973.

“No Images.” In 1926, who could foresee these developments? That year Opportunity, the official journal of the Urban League, at the recommendation of Hughes published No Images, Cuney’s first and best known poem winning a split first/second prize in the magazine’s yearly literary contests.

Written when he was 18, it reads: “She does not know/ Her beauty,/ She thinks her brown body/ Has no glory.// If she could dance/ Naked/ Under palm trees,/ And see her image in the river/ She would know.// But there are no palm trees/ On the street,/ And dish water gives back no images.”

One of the most often anthologized of African American poems, with its themes of Black beauty, an African past, river vs. street, and social commentary, Cuney became known as ‘a one poem poet’. But Waring Cuney published other poems in almost all important Harlem Renaissance anthologies and journals as Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell demonstrate in their book.

Afro-Texans. Images in the River is divided into two parts, Part I: Waring Cuney and His Family, and Part II: 100 Selected Poems. In their Introduction Davis and Mitchell write: “While our major goal is to introduce the poetry of Waring Cuney, a concomitant purpose is to recover the social, political, artistic, and cultural contributions of the Cuney and Waring (mixed-race) families.”    

Chapter 1: The Cuney Family in Texas, is a detailed and exhaustive story of Waring Cuney’s ancestors, centered on Waring Cuney’s great-uncle, the charismatic Texas politician Norris Wright Cuney (1846-1898). His daughter, concert pianist Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936), Waring Cuney’s cousin whom he would meet in Boston, is the focus of Chapter 3: A Woman Ahead of Her Time.

If your primary interest – like mine – is Cuney’s poetry, you may find the first chapter not only exhaustive, but at times exhausting, requiring an Appendix of two genealogical charts to help the reader keep track of seven generations of Cuney and Waring individuals and relationships. 

But we must keep in mind that Davis and Mitchell’s monograph is volume two in the Texas Tech University Press series of books on Afro-Texans. And we must remind ourselves of the importance of researching and writing Texan and Southern history before it is disremembered or even erased.

Researching the 1921 Tulsa Massacre in the city’s public library, for example, Davis and Mitchell found that all newspaper articles about the massacre had been roughly ripped out of the bound volumes. (For a brief note on the massacre, see the Reading Black article Birmingham, 1963).

Seventh Street. Chapter 2, Waring Cuney in Washington, D.C., and chapter 3 (on Boston and Maud Cuney Hare) finally puts Waring Cuney on the stage, even as both chapters are still primarily concerned with tracking down the history of the Cuney/Waring families. His father, Norris Wright Cuney II, had left Galveston, Texas, to study in Washington, and Cuney was born and raised only a few blocks from Howard University where three generations of his Black elite family studied.

Despite their solidly middle class upbringing, Hughes and Cuney found inspiration for their urban poetry in the notorious Seventh Street, where, according to Hughes, “the ordinary Negro played the blues, ate watermelons, shot pool, told tall tales, looked at the dome of the Capitol and laughed out loud.” Cuney’s more sober No Images could well have been a result of a visit to Seventh Street.

Shortly after Cuney met Langston Hughes, in early 1926 both men joined Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Despite being HBCU, a Historically Black College and University, founded in 1854, at that time “the school was rigidly segregated, the students all Black and faculty, administrators, and trustees all white,” as Davis and Mitchell note. Hughes graduated in 1929. (Thurgood Marshall, the future US Supreme Court Justice, would graduate the following year, in 1930). But Waring Cuney would soon leave Lincoln for Boston and the New England Conservatory of Music.  

Maud Cuney Hare. W.E.B. DuBois, the young Harvard scholar, had been smitten when he met the beautiful and charismatic Maud Cuney Hare in Boston in 1891. “She was a princess who reigned in colored Boston, with me among the hosts of young men bowing before her throne,” he later wrote.

To Waring Cuney, Maud was his close older cousin, ‘Aunt Maud’, as he called her in letters to Hughes. Maud was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, and it was probably she who induced Waring to pursue his ‘first love’, music. She introduced him to the Saturday Evening Quill Club where he met novelist Dorothy West (The Living is Easy, 1948) and her cousin, poet Helene Johnson (This Waiting for Love, published posthumously in 2006). And Davis and Mitchell reprint four ‘apprenticeship’ poems first published in the Saturday Evening Quill magazine.

Davis and Mitchell call Norris Wright Cuney: A Tribute of the Black People (Crisis Publ. Company, 1913), Maud’s biography of her father, the “most important source of Cuney family history.”  

Today Maud Cuney Hare is best known – if at all – for Negro Musicians and Their Music (The Associated Publishers, 1936), her pioneering research on Black music and its roots in Africa and the Americas. But this year, Harvard University on October 4 and 5, on her 150^th birthday, celebrated the “trailblazing music historian, pianist, and community organizer” with exhibits and events in both Boston and Cambridge under the banner “The Life and Legacy of Maud Cuney-Hare.”

“Southern Exposure” and World Waw II. Waring Cuney never became a professional singer and musician, but in the late 1930s he collaborated with one. In 1941 folk singer and blues guitarist Josh White (1914-1969) released Southern Exposure: An Album of Jim Crow Blues (Keynote Recordings). Cuney wrote the song/lyrics – arguably some of the finest poetry he ever wrote.

Titles like Jim Crow Train, Bad Housing Blues, and Hard Time Blues tell their own story on what critic Elijah Ward in Josh White and the Protest Blues has called “the first full-fledged Civil Rights album.” Davis and Mitchell include five of the album’s six poems among the 100 Selected Poems, all except the title track Southern Exposure (“boss takes my crop and poll tax takes my vote”).

The following year, in July 1942, 36-year-old Cuney enlisted as a private in the US army. Two poems from the Southern Exposure album, Defense Factory Blues and Uncle Sam Says, had protested segregation in the armed forces, and in one of his WW II poems Cuney  wrote: “He was overseas – / Colored, and in the army – / You know what they did to our boys.” Serving in the South Pacific, Davis and Mitchell write, Waring Cuney too paid a price on his body and his mind, and in the summer of 1945 he was hospitalized in Manila with “battle fatigue” or “shell chock.”

When he returned to the States Waring Cuney settled, not in Washington, D.C., but in an apartment in the Bronx where he lived for the rest of his life. In later years, after 1961, he became a recluse.

The Dutch Connection. Dutch born editors Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971) and Paul Breman (1931-2008) must be credited for keeping Waring Cuney’s name alive as a poet. The playful poem, My Lord, What a Morning, for example, on the Galveston-born heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson’s fight with James Jeffries in 1910, was first published in Pool’s 1962 anthology Beyond the Blues: “Fighting is wrong,/ But what an uppercut./  Oh, my Lord,/ What a morning,/ Oh, my Lord/ What a feeling,/ When Jack Johnson/ Turned Jim Jeffries’/ Lily-white face/ Up to the ceiling./  Oh, my Lord/ Take care of Jack./ Keep him, Lord/ As you made him,/ Big, and strong, and Black.”

London-based Paul Breman edited Puzzles (1960), and edited and published Storefront Church (1973) as volume twenty-three in his Heritage series of Black poetry. Storefront Church is dedicated to Adeline (Norris), a white nurse from Wisconsin whom Waring Cuney had met when recovering from his war time traumas. Though they were never married or lived together, from around 1955 they maintained a close relationship that lasted until Cuney’s death in 1976.

Major or minor? In their Introduction, Davis and Mitchell protest that a critic in The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972), a collection of essays edited by poet Arna Bontemps, had placed Waring Cuney in the “second echelon” of Harlem Renaissance poets. They quote Paul Breman, who in his introduction to Puzzles had called Cuney “one of America’s major poets.”

But by 1973, Breman had revised himself. On the back cover of Storefront Church he wrote that “Puzzles was a beautiful book … marred only by a very silly introduction.” But less will do. With Images in the River and 100 Selected Poems Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell have secured Waring Cuney’s place in the cannon as an important, if minor, poet of the Harlem Renaissance. 

UFI // 29 November 2024         

APPENDIX. In 100 Selected Poems, Part II of Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell’s Images in the River, each poem is prefaced by contextual information, and at the bottom of the page a note on previous publication(s).   

This appendix, with facts about albums, books, magazines, writers, editors & publishers is meant as a supplement to the Davis and Mitchell notes.

I: RECORD AND BOOK PUBLICATIONS:

Southern Exposure: An Album of Jim Crow Blues (Keynote Recordings, 1941)

Waring Cuney wrote the texts/poems for this album of ‘Jim Crow Blues’ by singer and blues guitarist Josh White (1914-1969).

Uncle Sam Says, p. 209

Defense Factory Blues, p. 213

Jim Crow Train, p. 222

Bad Housing Blues, p. 228

Hard Time of Blues, p. 230 – also in: Storefront Church, 1973

Puzzles (De Roos, 1960)

The first of two volumes of poetry by Waring Cuney edited by Dutch born, London based bookseller and publisher Paul Breman (1931-2008).

Old Saying, p. 248

Guitar Music, p. 256

Girl from Oklahoma, p. 284

Sunset Thoughts, p. 285

Couples, p. 291

The Neighbors Stood on the Corner, p. 292

Old Workman, p. 296

October Winds, p. 301

Beale Street, p. 302

Storefront Church (Paul Breman, 1973)

The second volume of William Waring Cuney’s poetry edited by Paul Breman, published as volume twenty-three in his Heritage series of Black poetry.

(No Images, p. 185 – first published in Opportunity, June 1926 – also in: The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1931)

Carry Me Back, p. 225

(Hard Time Blues, p. 230 – first recorded on Southern Exposure, 1941)

Nineteen-Twenty-Nine, p. 233

Saturday Night Talk, p. 234

Let Me Tell You Blues Singers Something, p. 255

Jelly Roll and Lucky, p. 257

My Jesus, p. 278

Darkness Hides His Throne, p. 279

Roll, Jordan, roll, p. 280

Storefront Church, p. 281

Prayer for a Visitor, p. 282

Down-home Boy, p. 303

Bessie Smith, p. 306

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (Harper & Brothers, 1927)

An important collection of African American poetry edited by Countee Cullen (1903-1946), a major poet of the Harlem Renaissance.   

(A Death Bed, p. 190 – first published in Fire!!, November, 1926)

Dust, p. 243

(A Triviality, p. 245 – first published in Opportunity, November, 1927)

The Radical, p. 246

I Think I See Him There, p. 276

Folk-Say: A Regional Miscellany (University of Oklahoma Press, 1930)

Edited by Benjamin A. Botkin (1901-1975), American folklorist and scholar, author of Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (1945).

Chain Gang Chant, p. 200

The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1931)

First published in 1922, edited and with an influential preface by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), civil rights leader, novelist, poet, song writer, diplomat, etc.

(No Images, p. 185 – first published in Opportunity, June 1926 – also in: Storefront Church, 1973)

Wake Cry, p. 192

(Burial of the Young Love, p. 204 – first published in The Saturday Evening Quill, April, 1929)

Finis, p. 258

Threnody, p. 259 

Troubled Jesus, p. 277 – also in: Golden Slippers, 1941

Golden Slippers (Harper & Row, 1941)

Subtitled An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, this anthology was edited by Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps (1902-1973).

(Troubled Jesus, p. 277   (1941 – first published in The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1931)

Lincoln University Poets: Centennial Anthology (Fine Edition Press, 1954)

Edited by three Lincoln poets, Hughes, Cuney, and Bruce M. Wright (1917-2005), occasional poet and New York State Supreme Court judge.

Prayer, p. 193

Beyond the Blues (Hand & Flower Press, 1962)

One of several anthologies and articles on Black American literature edited or written by Dutch poet and activist Rosey E. Pool (1905-1971).

My Lord, What a Morning, p. 195

Charles Parker, 1920-1955, p. 197

II: MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS:

Opportunity

Published by the National Urban League as A Journal of Negro Life, Opportunity from 1923 to 1928 was edited by sociologist Charles S. Johnson (1893-1956).

No Images, p. 185 (June, 1926 – also in: The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1931 – and Storefront Church, 1973)

Elaine, p. 208   (April, 1935)

A Triviality, p. 245 (November,1927 – also in: Caroling Dusk, 1927)

Fire!!

A one-issue magazine subtitled A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, edited by Harlem Renaissance novelist Wallace Thurman (1902-1934).

The Death Bed, p. 190    (November, 1926 – also in: Caroling Dusk, 1927)

Palms

Later set to music by the Italian composer Giacomo Manzoni (b. 1932), Grave was published in an issue of the modernist magazine edited by Countee Cullen.

Grave, p. 199   (October, 1926)

The Saturday Evening Quill

The Saturday Evening Quill Club, founded 1925, issued only three issues of its magazine, edited by Boston journalist Eugene Gordon (1891-1974).

Play a Blues for Louise, p. 201   (April, 1929)

Jazz Band, p. 202   (April, 1929)

Nude Walker, p. 203   (April, 1929)

Burial of the Young Love, p. 204   (April, 1929 – also in: The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1931)

On with the Dirge, p. 207   (April, 1929)

The Crisis

The official organ of the NAACP, The Crises was founded in 1910 by historian, sociologist, civil rights activist, and author W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963).

Café Chantant, p. 250   (Vol. 42, No. 2, February, 1935)

Young Singing, p. 251   (Vol. 42, No.2, February, 1935)

Promise, p. 252   (Vol. 42, No. 2, February, 1935)

Side Street, p. 253   (May, 1937)

Challenge

Challenge, a short-lived literary magazine, was founded in 1934 by Boston born novelist and short-story writer Dorothy West (1907-1998).

Song of a Song, p. 254   (May, 1935)

Cavalcade  

Cavalcade was established by the Southern Negro Youth Congress, a civil rights organization founded in1937 (dissolved 1949).

Organize Blues, p. 235   (Vol. 1, No. 1, April, 1941)

(Uncle Sam Says, p. 209 – Vol. 1, No. 4, October, 1941 – first recorded on Southern Exposure, 1941)

The Pittsburgh Courier

The Pittsburgh Courier (1907-1966) in the 1930s and 1940’s was one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers in the country.

Some Talk for Govenor Talmadge, p. 223   (September 20, 1941)

The People’s Voice

This poem was first published in The People’s Voice, a Harlem newspaper founded by politician, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (1908-1972).

Freeport, p. 186   (June 1, 1946)

Negro History Bulletin

Negro History Bulletin was one of several publications and institutions founded by African American historian and educator Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950).

I Dreamed I Saw Lord Daniels, p. 304   (Vol. 21, No. 7, April, 1958)

The Iowa Review

TIR, The Iowa Review, was founded in 1970 as a publication of the University of Iowa. Soft Kid was the last poem Warring Cuney published.

Soft Kid, p. 307   (Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring, 1975)

III: PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED:

When the Lights Go On, p. 188   (Jan. 17, 1943)

Big Talk, p. 189   (Jan. 17, 1943)

A Prayer on a Violin, p. 194   (Mar. 28, 1961)

Little Arthur, p. 196   (Jan. 22, 1961)

Boston, p. 206   (Jul. 29, 1973)

Past Events, p. 210   (Mar. 9, 1961)

The Man Without a Country, p. 211   (Mar. 30, 1961)

Black Doll Blues, p. 214   (Dec, 2, 1960)

Sergeant Dusty, p. 215   (Jan. 17, 1943 – revised Jan. 6, 1960)

They Mighty Near Fit, p. 217   (Sep. 14, 1943)

Dusty and Lucky Agree, p. 218   (Jan. 17, 1943)

One Hundred Years Later, p. 226   (Feb. 28, 1961)

Golf in Georgia, p. 227   (Feb. 28, 1961)

T.B. Blues, p. 229   (Dec. 27, 1960)

Mistreatin’ Blues, p. 232   (Nov. 26, 1942)

American Negro Labor, p. 236   (Rome, Italy – Aug. 22, 1929)

I Got a Date at the Sugar Bowl, p. 237   (Jul. 4, 1943)

Turkey Breast, p. 239   (Aug., 1943)

Telephone Book, p. 247   (c. 1952)

I Thought of My True Love, p. 260   (May 2, 1949)

Four Little Pictures, p. 261   (May 2, 1949)

Why Call Her Name? p. 262   (May 2, 1949)

Tell Irene Hello, p. 263   (May 2, 1949)

Nan, p. 264   (May 2, 1949)

Three in a Row, p. 265   (May 2, 1949)

Lonesome Yellow Girl, p. 266   (May 2, 1949)

September Sun on Tinton Avenue, p. 267   (c. 1952)

The Ledge, p. 269   (c. 1952)

Tenants, p. 270   (c. 1952)

April Funeral, p. 271   (c. 1957)

Rain Sounds, p. 273   (c. 1952)

Sunrise for Six People, p. 274   (c. 1952)

Well Now, p. 286   (Dec. 23, 1960)

I Tell My Baby, p. 287   (Jan. 1, 1960)

A Man and a Woman, p. 288   (???)

Sorry, p. 289   (Feb. 11, 1960)

Laila, p. 290   (May 12, 1974)

Ward Six, p. 294   (Jul. 25, 1945)

Two Words, p. 295   (Jul. 25, 1945)

A Big Book of Poetry, p. 297   (Feb. 12, 1961)

A New Book, p. 298   (Mar. 2, 1961)

Skies Less Grey, p. 299   (Jan. 16, 1960)

Interview, p. 300   (Mar. 27, 1961)