1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910970791003321

Autore

McKay Claude <1890-1948.>

Titolo

Complete poems / / Claude McKay ; edited and with an introduction by William J. Maxwell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Urbana, : University of Illinois Press, c2004

ISBN

9780252094972

0252094972

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (457 p.)

Collana

American Poetry Recovery

Altri autori (Persone)

MaxwellWilliam J (College teacher)

Disciplina

811/.52

Soggetti

Jamaican Americans

Black people

Harlem (New York, N.Y.) Poetry

Jamaica Poetry

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : Claude McKay : lyric poetry in the age of cataclysm / William J. Maxwell -- Jamaican periodical poetry, 1911-12 -- Songs of Jamaica (1912) -- Constab ballads (1912) -- Early English and American poetry, 1916-22 -- Harlem shadows (1922) -- The Clinic, circa 1923 -- The years between, 1925-34 -- Cities, circa 1934 -- The cycle, circa 1943 -- Final Catholic poetry, 1945-47.

Sommario/riassunto

Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work were marked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.