MJJG - Claude McKay sonnets

[Raphael Saltwood]

Ok, I may have opined that a sonnet was an unusual form for Claude McKay - had him pegged as experimental writer with pansexual preoccupations & not typically trad-sonnet guy....

I was so wrong! Apparently he is something of a sonnet sensation.

These are great, imho:

http://www.sonnets.org/mckay.htm#010


For instance —-
America
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Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

And several more in widely varying themes.


That said, I think I can see some ways Reed doesn’t completely accord with his worldview. But did think him worth “name-checking” (as Robin Landseadel might say.)

& 1 for good measure:

On A Primitive Canoe
[http://www.sonnets.org/handup.gif]<http://www.sonnets.org/mckay.htm#top>

Here, passing lonely down this quiet lane,
Before a mud-splashed window long I pause
To gaze and gaze, while through my active brain
Still thoughts are stirred to wakefulness; because
Long, long ago in a dim unknown land,
A massive forest-tree, ax-felled, adze-hewn,
Was deftly done by cunning mortal hand
Into a symbol of the tender moon.
Why does it thrill more than the handsome boat
That bore me o'er the wild Atlantic ways,
And fill me with rare sense of things remote
>From this harsh land of fretful nights and days?
I cannot answer but, whate'er it be,
An old wine has intoxicated me.