Appearing for the first time on Nook, this digitized 1927 Countee Cullen collection contains several hard-to-find poems, as well as three poems that cannot be found online at all. (Nor are they in other searchable Cullen collections.) The digitized text has been carefully proofread to ensure the spelling, formatting, and punctuation are faithful to the author's intent.

Countee Cullen once said, "Most things I write, I do for the sheer love of them. A number of times I have said I wanted to be a poet and known as such, and not as a Negro poet. Somehow or other, however, I find my poetry of itself treating of the Negro, of his joys and sorrows - mostly of the latter, and of the heights and depths of emotion which I feel as a Negro."

Of one of the poems in this volume, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: "The Black Christ has great literary beauty. Its theme is so compelling that I often think it should be required reading in every school throughout the country where youngsters are mature enough to understand and feel the tragedy of a race as expressed by a great poet."

When On These I Stand was first published, other comments were:
"Admirers of this Negro lyric poet's work, of which there are a great many, will find all their favorites among his poems preserved in this volume, while strangers to his genius could ask for no better introduction to it. I am enchanted to have these poems in so compact a form."
Carl Van Vechten

"How satisfying it is to have, in this beautiful volume, the best of the careful talent of Countee Cullen. Here is embroidered classicism deftly mixed with bare rebellion. Here is a book that should be in the library of every lover of lyrical richness."
Gwendolyn Brooks