Complete Poems (American Poetry Recovery Series) - Softcover

McKay, Claude

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252075900 ISBN 13: 9780252075902

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2008

Synopsis

Containing more than three hundred poems, including nearly a hundred previously unpublished works, this unique collection showcases the intellectual range of Claude McKay (1889-1948), the Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose life and work were marked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 \u0022If We Must Die.\u0022 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 \u0022violent sonnets\u0022 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.

About this title

Review:

"Maxwell's introduction offers a fascinating overview of McKay's life and a spirited defense of his poetry."

"A volume that no student of the Harlem Renaissance ... or negritude, diaspora, and Caribbean language literature can live without. ... A vital contribution to black studies."

"Maxwell has edited this comprehensive volume superbly, hunting down every last poem. ... [He] has deepened our sense of McKay's life and increased our respect for the independence of mind behind all his work."

From the Author:

A pioneer of black modernism, Claude McKay's varied and influential books include the poetry collections Harlem Shadows and Songs of Jamaica, and the novels Banjo, Home to Harlem, and Banana Bottom.

William J. Maxwell is an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of the award-winning New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars.

 

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0252075900
• ISBN 13: 9780252075902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 456
• Editor: Maxwell William J.