Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a
hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection
showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the
Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work were marked by
restless travel and steadfast social protest. McKay's first poems
were composed in rural Jamaican creole and launched his lifelong
commitment to representing everyday black culture from the bottom
up. Migrating to New York, he reinvigorated the English sonnet and
helped spark the Harlem Renaissance with poems such as "If We Must
Die." After coming under scrutiny for his communism, he traveled
throughout Europe and North Africa for twelve years and returned to
Harlem in 1934, having denounced Stalin's Soviet Union. By then,
McKay's pristine "violent sonnets" were giving way to confessional
lyrics informed by his newfound Catholicism.
McKay's verse eludes easy definition, yet this complete
anthology, vividly introduced and carefully annotated by William J.
Maxwell, acquaints readers with the full transnational evolution of
a major voice in twentieth-century poetry.
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