Description

Details: Paperback. 456 pages. 2008.

About

The complete poetry—published and unpublished—of a pioneer of Black modernism. Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work was marked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. 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.

McKay was a Jamaican poet who eventually made a home in Chicago—similar to Fall/Winter 2020-21 exhibition artist Ebony G. Patterson’s path. One of his poems is read in …three kings weep…, a video installation created by Patterson in 2018. Author: Claude McKay. Editor/Other: Edited and with an Introduction by William J. Maxwell.

Size: 6 x 9.25 in.