Incident
An eight-year-old smiles at a boy in Baltimore, gets a racial slur in return, and forgets everything else about months in the city.
Incident the full poem, lines numbered
Twelve short lines in a sing-song ballad rhythm tell of one moment on a childhood visit. A smile is answered with a hateful word, and that word crowds out everything else the speaker saw in Baltimore. Watch how calmly the story is told, and how the rhyme lands the blow at the end of the middle stanza.
The speaker looks back on a visit to Baltimore in childhood. Riding through the city, happy and excited, the child noticed a boy from Baltimore who kept looking straight at the speaker. The speaker was eight years old and small, and the other boy was no bigger. So the speaker smiled at him. The boy answered by sticking out his tongue and calling the speaker a racial slur, the most hateful insult aimed at Black Americans. It is the only spoken word in the poem. In the last stanza the speaker says that they saw the whole of Baltimore, from May until December. Yet of everything that happened there in all those months, that one moment is the only thing the speaker remembers. The poem gives no comment on the other boy and never says how the child felt. It lets the lost months show how deep the wound went.
Speaker & situation
Form & sound
Line by line what each part says and does
- 1
Lines 1–4
A happy ride and a stare
The speaker remembers riding through “old Baltimore,” full of “glee.” A boy from the city, “a Baltimorean,” keeps looking straight at the speaker.
How it worksThe opening is cheerful and innocent, and the stare is not yet hostile. The reader, like the child, has no idea what is coming.
- 2
Lines 5–8
The smile and the slur
The speaker was eight and very small, and the other boy was “no whit bigger,” meaning not at all bigger. The speaker smiles at him. He sticks out his tongue and calls the speaker a racial slur.
How it worksThe two children are equals in size, so nothing about strength or threat explains the insult; it rests on race alone. The child’s smile is an offer of friendship, and the slur refuses it.
- 3
Lines 9–12
All that is left
The speaker saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December. Of all the things that happened there, the insult is the only one the speaker remembers.
How it worksThe last stanza measures the harm. Months of sights and experiences have been wiped out by one word, and the plain, calm statement shows how deep the wound went.
The turn
Lines 7–8
Lines 1 to 6 set up an ordinary, even friendly meeting between two small children. The “but” in line 7 turns it: the smile is answered with a stuck-out tongue and a slur. The last stanza then steps back to show what that moment did to the speaker’s memory.
Literary devices with line numbers
Understatement
The title calls the event an “Incident,” a word for something minor, and line 12 reports its effect in the flattest terms: “That’s all that I remember.” The speaker never names the pain, so the reader has to feel it.
Irony
In line 2 the child is full of “glee,” and in line 7 the child smiles in friendship. The answer is the opposite of what that openness invites, and a long stay in a whole city shrinks to one ugly moment (lines 9 to 12).
Rhyme placement
In line 6, “bigger” sets up a rhyme, and the reader of a ballad waits for it. The slur completes that rhyme at the end of line 8, so the insult lands on the stanza’s final and strongest beat.
Contrast of form and content
The poem uses the sing-song meter of nursery rhymes and hymns, four beats and then three. The light tune suits a child’s view of the world, and it makes the cruelty in line 8 more shocking when it arrives.
Retrospective point of view
The speaker tells the story years later. “Now I was eight” in line 5 is a storyteller’s “now,” not the present. The adult voice explains nothing and judges no one, but lines 9 to 12 show the memory has not faded.
Juxtaposition
Lines 9 and 10 set out a large span of place and time (“the whole of Baltimore,” “From May until December”). Lines 11 and 12 set against it the single moment that survives. The imbalance shows how one act of hatred can outweigh months of experience.
Themes in Incident
Racism learned early
The boy who uses the slur is a child “no whit bigger” than the speaker (line 6). Many readers draw the point that he was not born with this hatred but has already been taught it. The poem shows racism at work between two small children.
The lasting harm of words
One word, spoken in a moment, outlasts months of memories (lines 11 and 12). The poem shows that an insult can do deep and lasting damage, especially to a child.
Lost innocence
The speaker begins “Heart-filled, head-filled with glee” (line 2) and smiles at a stranger. The slur ends that easy trust. The poem marks the moment a Black child learns how some people see them.
Memory
The poem is a memory about memory. It describes nothing of Baltimore beyond one meeting because, as line 12 says, nothing else survived.
Images and symbols
The smile
The child’s smile in line 7 stands for openness and trust between children. It is the gesture the slur answers.
Baltimore
The city’s name appears in lines 1, 3 and 9. It should hold a whole season of sights, but in the speaker’s memory it shrinks to one moment on the street.
Tensions
Innocence vs. hatred. A child’s friendly smile meets a slur from another child. The poem does not resolve the conflict. It shows only the mark it left.
How Incident ends, explained
The last stanza moves away from the moment itself. The speaker says they saw “the whole of Baltimore” from May until December, most of a year of sights and days. Then line 12 cancels all of it: “That’s all that I remember.” Everything else from that time is gone, and only the insult is left. The ending works through understatement. The speaker never says they were hurt, never describes tears or anger, and never comments on the other boy. The reader has to measure the harm by what it destroyed, and that restraint is part of why the poem is hard to forget. The word itself explains the damage. The slur in line 8 is the most hateful insult aimed at Black Americans, a word used to say that a person is less than human. Said by one child to another, in answer to a smile, it teaches an eight-year-old how the world can see a Black child. Readers take the ending in slightly different directions. Some stress the lasting injury that a single act of racism can do. Others notice that the other boy is also a child, and read the poem as showing how early racism is learned. Many notice that the memory is told calmly, years later, which suggests the wound has not healed so much as settled in.
“Once riding in old Baltimore, / Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,”
“Now I was eight and very small, / And he was no whit bigger,”
“I saw the whole of Baltimore / From May until December;”
“Of all the things that happened there / That’s all that I remember.”
Common misreadings
MythThe poem says the other boy was white.
ActuallyIt never names his race. He is only “a Baltimorean” (line 3) who is “no whit bigger” than the speaker (line 6). Readers infer the rest from the slur and from the time and place.
MythThe speaker was bullied by someone older or bigger.
ActuallyLine 6 says the other child was “no whit bigger,” meaning not at all bigger. The poem makes the two children equals, so the insult cannot be explained by a bully’s size or strength. It rests on race alone.
MythThe poem is Cullen’s own report of a trip he took as a child.
ActuallyReaders often assume so, but the poem gives the speaker no name and does not claim to be autobiography. In an essay, write about “the speaker” rather than Cullen unless you have a source.
AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style
In Countee Cullen’s “Incident,” an adult remembers a childhood visit to Baltimore and a single word spoken by another child. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Cullen uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on memory and the harm of racism.
What a strong response notices
- The cheerful opening in lines 1–2 (“Heart-filled, head-filled with glee”) and how it sets up the fall in line 8.
- The equal size of the two children in lines 5–6, which rules out any explanation but race.
- The turn on “but” in line 7, and the rhyme that places the slur at the end of line 8, the stanza’s strongest position.
- The contrast in lines 9–12 between a whole city over many months and the one memory that survives.
- The ballad meter and the understated title, which keep the telling calm and leave the reader to supply the pain.
Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.
Test yourself
1. How old was the speaker when the incident happened?
Line 5 says, “Now I was eight and very small.”
2. What does “no whit bigger” mean in line 6?
“No whit” means “not at all.” The two children are the same size.
3. What does the speaker do just before the insult?
Line 7: “And so I smiled, but he poked out.”
4. How long did the speaker’s time in Baltimore last?
Lines 9 and 10 say the speaker saw the whole city “From May until December.”
5. What is the rhyme scheme of each stanza?
Only the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme, as in glee and me.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
A child remembers visiting the city of Baltimore at age eight. The child was riding along, happy and excited. Another boy, no bigger, kept staring. The child smiled at him. The boy stuck out his tongue and called the child a very cruel name meant to insult Black people. The child stayed for months and saw the whole city, but that cruel moment is the only thing the child still remembers.
Compare & connect
Song for a Dark Girl
Another Harlem Renaissance poem that sets racist cruelty inside a simple song form. In both, the familiar tune makes the violence more shocking.
I, Too
Hughes’s speaker is sent to eat in the kitchen when company comes and answers with calm confidence about tomorrow. Both poems show a Black speaker meeting exclusion, but Cullen’s records the wound while Hughes’s looks ahead.
To Kill a Mockingbird
Scout Finch learns about racism as a child, and like Cullen’s speaker she tells the story from an adult’s distance, years after the events.
Discussion and essay prompts:
💬 Discussion questions
- What is the poem Incident by Countee Cullen about
- What is the theme of Incident by Countee Cullen
- Why does the speaker only remember one thing in Incident
- How does Incident explore the theme of racism learned early?
- How does Incident explore the theme of the lasting harm of words?
- What is the central conflict in Incident, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Countee Cullen develops the theme of racism learned early in Incident. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the smile in Incident. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Countee Cullen use understatement to shape the reader’s experience of Incident?
- Some readers assume that the poem says the other boy was white. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What is the poem Incident by Countee Cullen about
- What is the theme of Incident by Countee Cullen
- Why does the speaker only remember one thing in Incident
- What is the tone of Incident by Countee Cullen
- What is the rhyme scheme of Incident by Countee Cullen
- Why is the poem called Incident
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Color (Harper & Brothers, 1925), Countee Cullen’s first book, checked line by line against the page image of that printing. It is in the public domain.