“Thoughts in a Zoo” is a poem composed by Countée Cullen. Cullen was one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, which is a comprehensive term covering a multitude of African American artists that came to prominence in the 1920s. Cullen attained such a degree of prominence within this highly influential membership that he was often referred to as the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance.
The bulk of scholarly criticism of his work has generally been devoted to his poems that specifically address issues related to being a black person in American society and the presence of systemic racism in society. Cullen cannot be pigeonholed merely as a poet writing within such a limited range of topics, however. Many of the finest efforts are more subtly presented in a way that allows them to be approached strictly from within a perspective of race while also offering opportunities to interpret them within a broader sense that applies to humanity in general. “Thoughts in a Zoo” is a major representative of this latter group.
The poem is also representative of another group that makes up a segment of Cullen’s canon. In 1923, his poem “The Ballad of the Brown Girl” won second place in a poetry contest. In 1925, “Threnody for a Brown Girl” won Poetry magazine’s John Reed Memorial Prize. That same year saw Cullen collect second prize earnings for two other poems.
“Thoughts in a Zoo” added to the poet’s growing collection of honors by taking second place in the poetry contest sponsored by The Crisis. The award earned Cullen $25 in 1926 which would be the equivalent of more than $400 in 2022. In that same year, Cullen also earned a Master of Arts degree from Harvard and began what would prove to be a significant relationship with the periodical Opportunity by launching a column titled “The Dark Tower.”
“Thoughts in a Zoo” was originally published in 1926 as a result of its placement in the poetry contest. Unlike Cullen’s verse which specifically addresses the issue of race, no such specificity is found in this narrative. The speaker who is contemplating the nature of man in comparison to animals while walking through a zoo could be of any race. Likewise, none of the animals in the zoo are allegorically identified with any racial counterpart in the human world. Rather than being steeped in the discourse of the political or social, it is a poem that illustrates Cullen’s philosophical side. Overcome by the sight of animals trapped within the literal cages of typical 1920’s-era zoos, the speaker is moved to a contemplation of the “cages” in which mankind finds itself imprisoned. While it is certainly not difficult to narrow down the perspective of the text in a way that explicitly interprets it as commentary on slavery, it is just as easy to broaden that perspective into an interpretation that includes all humans regardless of differences.
