complete and utter free-write on the modernism of "The Love Song..." & "Heritage"

Cullen begins his seven stanza iambic poem with a question concerning the nature of an abstract and rather remote Africa. He lists some tangible images such as; man and woman, sun, sky, sea and earth. The italics draws attention to his internal question of "what is Africa to me?", which is repeated throughout the poem in the same format at the end of each stanza as he tries to answer his own question. He is caught between two cultures, like the "patient etherized upon a table" which begins "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", that refers to a man not feeling his worth or influence in life. "Heritage" is the more modern poem when comparing the two, if you're analyzing them through a lens of addressable modern issues. The issue of ethnic identity crisis found in Cullen's poem in contrast to Prufrock's issue of "mid-life crises" depression is more modern in a societal focal view point. I do not think that one of these poems is "more American" over the other, because I do not think I am anywhere near qualified to distinguish what variables and facets of literature makes a work "American"; it is much too relative and I do not feel comfortable with it. As in regards to the poems "making something new", both Cullen and Prufrock take an internal conflicts that can be found in individuals throughout modern society and frame them in their own style, therefore making it new. "So I lie, who never quite Safely sleep from rain at night— I can never rest at all When the rain begins to fall; Like a soul gone mad with pain I must match its weird refrain."(C.Cullen) Cullen gives an example of this by referring to the state of his own personal soul.