Final answer:
Countee Cullen valued traditional poetic forms such as sonnets, rhymed couplets, and quatrains to explore and critique the experiences of African-Americans, utilizing structured rhyme schemes in his poetry.
Step-by-step explanation:
Countee Cullen valued traditional poetic forms such as sonnets, rhymed couplets, and quatrains. Cullen, a prominent figure in the early Harlem Renaissance, used traditional literary forms drawn from nineteenth-century English poetry to explore and critique the experiences of African-American artists, including poets.
A notable characteristic of traditional poems is their structured stanzas with rhyme schemes, as opposed to free verse which tends not to conform to a regular rhythm or set rhyme pattern. Examples of the structure within traditional poetry include sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, and epigrams, often employing rhyme schemes like ABAB or ABCD within stanzas or fixed patterns in non-stanzaic forms.