No Images

William Waring Cuney’s “No Images” (1926) is a short poem published at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. The poem encapsulates the driving theme of the movement itself: the discovery of the unsuspected beauty and glory of Black identity. In a writing career that spanned four decades, this poem, written when Cuney was only 18, is the poet’s most recognized and most anthologized poem. The deceptively simple poem, only 47 words, has a complex sonic effect, influenced by Cuney’s lifelong study of music. This gives the poem a tone of melancholy, reflected some 40 years after its publication when jazz icon Nina Simone (1933-2003) set the poem to a haunting, fragmented melody. 

“No Images” captures the image of an immigrant, a woman of color, working in a restaurant kitchen most likely in Harlem. The poem celebrates, if ironically, the beauty of the woman; the woman herself does not suspect her beauty. The poem thus explores The Perception of Beauty, how society creates its own definition of beauty, and how, in the end, the perception of beauty can become a manifestation of racism and bigotry—highlighting both The Impact of Racism on Self-Esteem and Alienation and the Effect of Immigration. 

Poet Biography

William Waring Cuney was born in Washington, DC, in 1906. His father, who earned a law degree from nearby Howard University, worked for more than 30 years at different posts in the federal government. His mother, a devoted public schoolteacher, gifted Cuney with a passion for music. 

Early on, Cuney dreamed of being a singer. He graduated from Philadelphia’s Lincoln University, one of the earliest and most prestigious of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Nicknamed Willy the Warbler by friends, Cuney studied at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music and then briefly at Rome’s Conservatory of Music. He focused on blues riffs and jazz improvisations before deciding he did not have the vocal command to pursue singing as a career. 

Langston Hughes, whom Cuney met at Lincoln University, convinced Cuney to try poetry. In 1926, at 19, Cuney submitted “No Images” to a poetry competition sponsored by Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, a New York-based magazine that was the voice of the flourishing Black artists community centered in Harlem. Cuney took first place. 

Cuney then moved to New York. Over the next 15 years, Cuney published poetry in journals and in collections, many sponsored by the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry experimented with both poetic forms and rhythms, reflecting the avant-garde energy of the Harlem Renaissance itself. 

Cuney served with distinction in the Army during World War II. By the 1960s, however, Cuney, frustrated over the United States’ resistance to addressing genuine civil rights reform, withdrew from the public eye. He lived quietly in the Bronx, writing only occasionally until his death on June 30, 1976. 

Poem Text

She does not know 

her beauty, 

she thinks her brown body 

has no glory. 

If she could dance 

Naked 

under palm trees 

and see her image in the river, 

she would know. 

But there are no palm trees 

on the street, 

and dish water gives back 

no images. 

Cuney, William Waring. “No Images.” 1926. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens with a woman of color unable to see that her “brown body” (Line 3) even has the possibility of being beautiful: “She does not know / her beauty” (Lines 1-2). The reader gets no description of the woman. The poem offers only the woman’s own harsh critique of herself, a reflection of her shattered self-esteem. More tragic than denying her body the possibility of being beautiful, however, the speaker suggests the woman denies her “brown body” (Line 3) the chance of “glory” (Line 4).

The poet then explains in the second stanza that if—and the poet knows the impossibility of this conditional hope—the woman could only get back to her native cultural environment and “dance / naked” (Lines 5-6) in her homeland, a tropical place with “palm trees” (Line 7) and rivers clear enough to show “her image” (Line 8), then “she would know” (Line 9) her beauty.

In the melancholy closing stanza, the poet despairs that “there are no palm trees” (Line 10) in the streets of the woman’s current city. For the woman who now washes dishes in a restaurant, joyously dancing naked and on a warm sunny beach under palm trees is at best a comforting memory, at worst a bitter irony. Far from seeing her glorious reflection in the sparkling waters of her island home, she stares only into grimy dishwater that “gives back / no images” (Lines 12-13).