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previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the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.
