Claude McKay |
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Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1889. He was educated by his older brother, who possessed a library of English novels, poetry, and scientific texts. At the
age of twenty, McKay published a book of verse called Songs of Jamaica,
recording his impressions of black life in Jamaica in dialect. In 1912, he
travelled to the United States to attend Tuskegee Institute. He remained there
only a few months, leaving to study agriculture at Kansas State University. In
1917, he published two sonnets, "The Harlem Dancer" and
"Invocation," and would later use the same poetic form to record his
reactionary views on the injustices of black life in America. In addition to
social and political concerns, McKay wrote on a variety of subjects, from his
Jamaican homeland to romantic love, with a use of passionate language. During
the twenties, McKay developed an interest in Communism and travelled to Russia
and then to France where he met Edna
St. Vincent Millay
and Lewis Sinclair. In 1934, McKay moved back to the United States and lived in
Harlem, New York. Losing faith in Communism, he turned his attention to the
teachings of various spiritual and political leaders in Harlem, eventually
converting to Catholicism. McKay's
viewpoints and poetic achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth century
set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger
black poets of the time, including Langston
Hughes.
He died in 1948. Some of
McKay’s Poetry: Constab
Ballads
(1912), Harlem Shadows (1922), Selected Poems (1953), Songs of
Jamaica (1912), The Dialect Poetry of Claude McKay (1972), The
Passion of Claude McKay (1973) |