Works Cited:

McKay, Claude, and William J. Maxwell. Complete Poems. University of Illinois Press, 2008.

Annotations by: Shane Kligerman

Wind poems have a longstanding tradition in history, from Shakespeare and Percy Shelley, to one of McKay's favorite African American sonnet writers, Paul Laurence Dunbar. McKay was known to have read all of the aforementioned poets (pp. xiii and xxxv).

Including "Subway Wind", McKay's use of the word "wind" can be found in twelve poems in the Harlem Shadows collection. See - "To One Coming North", "Wild May", "Morning Joy", "Winter in the Country", "To Winter", "Spring in New Hampshire", "The Night Fire", "Poetry", "The Snow Fairy", "Tormented", and "Jasmines" for other references.

Six poems of the twelve contain negative connotations of wind:

"Subway Wind" - "weary wind" and "captive wind"

"To One Coming North" - "wind-worried void is chilly, raw"

"Morning Joy" - "the cold wind moaning"

"The Night Fire" - "the wind in frenzy moans"

"Poetry" - "Windways, will sweep me into utter night. / For oh, I fear they will be swallowed up —"

"Tormented" - "The wild wind howling, darkly mad without"

The “Trades”, also known as “the trade winds”, were patterns of wind that directed European imperial trade routes across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, dispersing populations of dust and people from Africa to the Caribbean Sea. The northeast trade winds blow from Northeast Africa and stretch to and past the Caribbean, cooling the shores of Jamaica. See - MAP

The precise direction of these winds spanning across the Caribbean region and not reaching as far north as New York suggest McKay is specifically talking about his native Jamaica. During the slave trade of the 1400s, European vessels used the trade winds to transport slaves to the West Indies, as part of the route termed the Middle Passage.

While subway trains in New York came in many different colors, here McKay may be referencing to Standard Lo-V,#Low-Voltage_.28Low-V.29) a train privately operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) that was gray in color and operational in New York during his years there. An example of the color and hue can be seen in this picture. The train is occasionally brought out of retirement from the New York Transit Museum. The IRT operated (pp. 186) all the way from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway.

The three most common palm trees (pp. 4-10) indigenous to Jamaica are the coconut palm, royal palm and silver thatch palm. While all three of the aforementioned trees bloom white flowers, McKay's use of lofty likely refers to either the coconut or royal palm, as those two grow considerably taller (up to 80 feet) than the silver thatch (up to 30 feet).

(n.) A small sea-going fore-and-aft rigged vessel, originally with only two masts, but now often with three or four masts and carrying one or more topsails.

Schooners mostly transported passengers or cargo, and it was not uncommon for trade routes to encompass New York to Jamaica (pp 134) and vice versa.

Early 1900 subway trains donned dual-paned windows. The top windows, or "upper doors", could be opened.

"To give their summer jackets to the wind" refers to an act by subway riders who would hang their jackets or other articles of clothing out of the "upper door" as a gesture of waving goodbye to loved ones, or simply for jovial pleasure (similar to this vintage photo of children waving their handkerchiefs out the window of their train in Chicago, ca. 1902).

"The original Standard Lo-V IRT line ran from City Hall in lower Manhattan to Grand Central Terminal in midtown, and then heading west along 42nd Street to Times Square, the line finished by zipping north, all the way to 145th Street and Broadway in Harlem." (History.com) See - MAP 1 and MAP 2

Because McKay lived in Harlem (pp. 41) and worked at Penn Station (pp. XI) from 1914-1919, it is likely he frequented the subway on 125th street (via the Interborough Rapid Transit line, or IRT) to get to work. The train rides to and from work would have presented opportunities for McKay to come across “pale-cheeked children”, a reference to Caucasians.

Prior to 1910, Harlem was heavily populated by white people. It wasn't until the Harlem Renaissance movement began that the African American population began to increase. In 1910, blacks made up 9.89% of Central Harlem's population. By 1920, they made up 32.43% of Central Harlem's population. This rapid influx of the African American population created a racially mixed subway ride.

Gulls are highly adaptable birds that tend to live near coasts all around the world. One such gull, the laughing gull (see pp. 112), makes it home on both the coasts of Jamaica (close to where McKay grew up) (SEE MAP), and the coastlines of New York City.