Poetry Codex

American

Claude McKay

1889–1948

Claude McKay (1889–1948) was born in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, and published two volumes of dialect verse there before emigrating to the United States in 1912. He studied briefly at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State, then settled in New York, where he became a leading figure in the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem Shadows (1922), his first book of poems in standard English, gathered sonnets and lyrics of racial protest, urban life and homesickness for Jamaica, among them "If We Must Die" and "America". It carries an introduction by Max Eastman. McKay also wrote novels, including Home to Harlem (1928), and died in Chicago in 1948.

Poems (74)

  1. The Easter Flower
  2. To One Coming North
  3. America
  4. Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table
  5. The Tropics in New York
  6. Flame-Heart
  7. Home Thoughts
  8. On Broadway
  9. The Barrier
  10. Adolescence
  11. Homing Swallows
  12. The City’s Love
  13. North and South
  14. Wild May
  15. The Plateau
  16. After the Winter
  17. The Wild Goat
  18. Harlem Shadows
  19. The White City
  20. The Spanish Needle
  21. My Mother
  22. In Bondage
  23. December, 1919
  24. Heritage
  25. When I Have Passed Away
  26. Enslaved
  27. I Shall Return
  28. Morning Joy
  29. Africa
  30. On a Primitive Canoe
  31. Winter in the Country
  32. To Winter
  33. Spring in New Hampshire
  34. On the Road
  35. The Harlem Dancer
  36. Dawn in New York
  37. The Tired Worker
  38. Outcast
  39. I Know My Soul
  40. Birds of Prey
  41. The Castaways
  42. Exhortation: Summer, 1919
  43. The Lynching
  44. Baptism
  45. If We Must Die
  46. Subway Wind
  47. The Night Fire
  48. Poetry
  49. To a Poet
  50. A Prayer
  51. When Dawn Comes to the City
  52. O Word I Love to Sing
  53. Absence
  54. Summer Morn in New Hampshire
  55. Rest in Peace
  56. A Red Flower
  57. Courage
  58. To O.E.A.
  59. Romance
  60. Flower of Love
  61. The Snow Fairy
  62. La Paloma in London
  63. A Memory of June
  64. Flirtation
  65. Tormented
  66. Polarity
  67. One Year After
  68. French Leave
  69. Jasmines
  70. Commemoration
  71. Memorial
  72. Thirst
  73. Futility
  74. Through Agony

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