Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work were marked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.
The complete works of previously unpublished and published poetry of a pioneer of modern black writing
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"Maxwell has edited this comprehensive volume superbly, hunting down every last poem... [ He] has deepened our sense of McKay's life and increased our respect for the independence of mind behind all his work." Times Literary Supplement "A volume that no student of the Harlem Renaissance ... or negritude, diaspora, and Caribbean language literature can live without... A vital contribution to black studies." African American Review "Maxwell's introduction offers a fascinating overview of McKay's life and a spirited defense of his poetry." Los Angeles Times
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The complete works of previously unpublished and published poetry of a pioneer of modern black writing
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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vii | |
| INTRODUCTION: CLAUDE MCKAY-LYRIC POETRY IN THE AGE OF CATACLYSM |
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xi | |
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| Jamaican Periodical Poetry, 1911-12 |
|
1 | |
| Songs of Jamaica (1912) |
|
19 | |
| Constab Ballads (1912) |
|
86 | |
| Early English and American Poetry, 1916-22 |
|
130 | |
| Harlem Shadows (1922) |
|
152 | |
| "The Clinic," circa 1923 |
|
197 | |
| "The Years Between," 1925-34 |
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208 | |
| "Cities," circa 1934 |
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223 | |
| "The Cycle," circa 1943 |
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241 | |
| Final Catholic Poetry, 1945-47 |
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270 | |
| NOTES TO THE POEMS |
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281 | |
| WORKS CITED IN NOTES TO THE POEMS |
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393 | |
| INDEX OF FIRST LINES |
|
395 | |
| INDEX OF TITLES |
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401 | |
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), preeminent American writer and literary critic, exerted a worldwide influence on literature through his short fiction and his theoretical statements on poetry and the short story. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, a faculty member of Hunter College for nearly forty years, worked on Poe's writings from the 1920s until his death in 1968.
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