Poet and scholar Clint Smith discusses Countee Cullen’s “Atlantic City Waiter.” Along with Hughes, Cullen was perhaps the most visible and admired of the Harlem Renaissance poets, but he thought differently about his poetry than Hughes. Cullen saw beauty in European as well as Black American traditions, and his poems draw on influences from a broad range of available cultural traditions. Cullen’s Black America gives a sense that there is a world beyond America and its racism – a world to wh...