Interesting, too, is the experimental technique of "The Cat and the Saxophone." Like an orchestra score, the poem consists of two parts, bass and tenor, which the typography enables one to distinguish immediately, and which proceed together. The lines printed in capital letters are, furthermore, the text of a popular song; they constitute the sonorous setting of a cabaret within which there takes place the conversation of two lovers. which is printed in the normal way. On the value of this experiment, Cullen wrote: "This creation is a tour de force of its kind, but is it a poem?"
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From Black Poets of the United States From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1973 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.