Claude Mckay
Who is Claude Mckay
Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay OJ (September 15, 1890 – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay's interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and in 1919 he wrote "If We Must Die", one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.
A poet from the first, he also wrote five novels and a novella: Home to Harlem (1928), a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature; Banjo (1929); Banana Bottom (1...
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Claude Mckay Poems
- My Mother
I
Reg wished me to go with him to the field,
I paused because I did not want to go;
...
- When Dawn Comes To The City
The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
...
- French Leave
No servile little fear shall daunt my will
This morning. I have courage steeled to say
I will be lazy, conqueringly still,
I will not lose the hours in toil this day.
...
- Alfonso, Dressing To Wait At Table
Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad,
His eyes were made to capture women's hearts.
...
- The Wild Goat
O you would clothe me in silken frocks
And house me from the cold,
And bind with bright bands my glossy locks,
And buy me chains of gold;
...
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Claude Mckay Quotes
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Comments about Claude Mckay
- Deannamascle: spring in new hampshire by claude mckay - poems | academy of american poets
- Pinko_fag: gonna be adding marsha and sylvia, grace hutchins and anna rochester, betty millard, claude mckay, edward carpenter, and harry whyte. i don’t wanna add anyone living though, i feel weird about putting them next to dead people.
- Nonchalantly_: poems, particularly "when april comes", are verdant and crushing. claude mckay, in his "if we must die" sounds much closer to robert weldon johnson--very much so preacherly. staid, staunch, without lyric; does not conjure images, but marshals them
- Poetsorg: and we will build a cottage there
beside an open glade,
with black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
and ferns that never fade.
—claude mckay
- Gallexie5060: if we must die, let it not be like hogs. hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, while round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
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