17 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2019
  2. Oct 2018
  3. Sep 2017
    1. chambers of my heart

      The heart is comprised of four chambers -the right atrium, left atrium, right ventricle, and left ventricle. The heart acts as a pump circulating blood to the lungs to gather oxygen, which is then distributed to the body.

      The notion of the heart as the “Center of vitality in the body has been proposed and debated by physician, theologians and philosophers dating back to Aristotle. In Jamaica, as a young man, it is said that McKay was a voracious reader and studied "classical and British literature, as well as philosophy, science, and theology" under the tutelage of his brother Uriah Theodore. It is likely that he was exposed to these historical theories of the heart. The motif of vitality in the blood and heart is frequently found in the poems of Harlem Shadows. There are references to the heart in 26 (more than a third) of the poems in the collection. It is also noteworthy that the poem, as an English sonnet, is written in iambic pentameter, which said to replicate the rhythm of a beating heart.

  4. Aug 2017
    1. wanton

      Wanton, adj. and n. /ˈwɑntən/ 1. a. Of a person, a person's will, etc.: undisciplined, ungoverned; unmanageable, rebellious. 3. a. Lustful; not chaste, sexually promiscuous.

      “Wanton love,” or those behaviors traditionally associated with wanton love, such as lust and prostitution, appear frequently throughout McKay’s body of work, notably Home to Harlem and Banjo. Like the poem itself, which seems to celebrate the hate (or a certainly love for hate) as a source of inspiration as an artist, breaking from the tradition of sonnets depicting ‘true' love, McKay breaks with the conventions of his day and the beliefs of many of his contemporaries by depicting and celebrating the realities of life in Harlem, which include what would be considered by many lewd and lascivious behavior. .

    2. great ships pass, The tides, the wharves, the dens

      McKay briefly worked as a longshoreman in and around docks and wharves after moving to New York City around 1914 and lived and worked in the port city of Marseilles. He recounts the experience of living and traveling through ports in many of his works.

      Works like Home to Harlem and Banjo in particular incorporate such elements. According to Hisham Aidi, “It was in Marseilles that he was inspired to write his novel Banjo, a classic of New Negro literature, which envisioned a pan-African world community that included the Senegalese dockers and Algerian longshoremen whom he had encountered.”

      The difficult lives of working-class longshoremen and the harsh and diverse aesthetic of dock workers (and their myriad ethnicities), seems to have resonated with him. Docks, ports, wharves, and ships are a recurring setting and motif in McKay’s work.

      In his work A Long Way from Home, McKay writes,“I did not come to the knowing of Negro workers in an academic way, by talking to black crowds at meetings, not in a Bohemian way, by talking about them in cafes. I knew the unskilled Negro worker of the city by working with him as a porter and a longshoreman and as a waiter on the railroad. I lived in the same quarters and we drank and caroused together in bars and at rent parties. So when I came to write about the low-down Negro, I did not have to compose him from an outside view" (228).

    3. The fortressed port

      New York City and the Port of New York are dotted with various forts and batteries from both recent and bygone eras. McKay would certainly have been aware, and in the presence of, many of them.

    4. The poles and spires and towers

      In the first few decades of the 20th century, the New York City skyline looked quite different than it does today. There were fewer skyscrapers and the ones that did exist, like the Woolworth and Singer buildings, were more slender and spire-like.

      See also Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, London, September 3, 1802:" "This City now doth, like a garment, wear/ The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,/ Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie/ Open unto the fields, and to the sky;/All bright and glittering in the smokeless air."

    5. trains

      McKay worked as a porter and waiter on trains at various points between 1914-1918. The proliferation of trains at the start of the 20th century made it possible for members of all social classes to travel great distances quickly and inexpensively. However, for blacks traversing the country as Pullman porters, who typically held these jobs, there was a certain degree of danger as they crossed into segregated parts of the country; this became especially apparent during the race riots of 1919 that McKay writes about in "If We Must Die."

    6. through a mist

      The obscurity of the 'city in the mist' is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and highlights the relationship between the speaker and the city. See Prono’s article on “The White City.”Allusions to Eliot's The Wasteland appear elsewhere in McKay's work, particularly "The Desolate City."

    7. And makes my heaven in the white world's hell

      Perhaps an allusion to both Paradise Lost by John Milton and “The Clod and the Pebble” by William Blake, both of which play with the notion of making a heaven out of one’s hell.

      Also, in 1926, Carl Van Vechten, a white author and socialite enamored with black culture in Harlem, wrote and published a novella called Nigger Heaven. In the book, Van Vechten utilized what many have described as stock caricatures, and stereotyped the people and lifestyles in Harlem at the time. The book was controversial not only for its title, but also its subject matter. Many prominent members of the Harlem Renaissance saw it as an egregious insult to the black community. However, there were many members of the black community who came to the defense of Van Vechten, notably Langston Hughes, a friend and protégé of Van Vechten, and Hughes’s friend Claude McKay. McKay’s work Home to Harlem would receive similar reviews, especially from W.E.B. Du Bois. References to heaven and hell, especially tethered to race, should be considered in the context of Van Vechten’s work and the ensuing controversy.

    8. dark Passion

      Passion, n. /ˈpæʃ(ə)n/ Senses relating to physical suffering and pain.

      The word "passion" appears 27 times in Harlem Shadows, three of which are made proper nouns. His use of "Passion" evokes connections to Christ and martyrdom. According to Sam Schechner, the word is derived from the Latin passio, which means suffering, and first appears, in reference to the death of Christ some time in the 2nd century.

    9. I live my part

      The irony of living amongst so much wealth yet being barred from it is a recurring concept in McKay's work. The juxtaposition highlights the injustice of systemic racism and the social exclusion of marginalized people. In his critical essay "The White City," Prono writes: "McKay is... the forerunner of other African-American intellectuals, such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ann Perry, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, who would explore the contradictions of the urban ghetto's proximity but incomplete access to the wealth and power of America" (446).

    10. I will not toy with it nor bend an inch

      According to Cary Nelson, "bend an inch" is an allusion to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew: "I'll not budge an inch boy" (1.1.14). See notes in William Maxwell's Complete Poems by Claude McKay.

    11. The White City

      McKay uses the English sonnet form in "The White City". His use of the sonnet form garnered a great deal of criticism from his contemporaries in the Harlem Renaissance, not only because of its association with white, Anglo-European colonialism, but also as an antiquated poetic form in context of modernism. “The White City,” exemplifies McKay's many protest sonnets, such as his famous poem "If we Must Die."

      By using the sonnet form, McKay was able to convey to a white audience the struggles of black Americans using a poetic form from the European literary tradition. According to James Keller, “The sonnet form was not merely an accident of McKay's education, but was specifically selected to illustrate the poet's political agenda, to expose and undermine the many misconceptions about African Americans that the dominant culture seeks to perpetuate.”

      Luca Prono writes of McKay use of the sonnet, "The choice of the sonnet to convey such a sustained feeling of hate may seem an odd one at first. Yet it is completely consistent with the rhetoric of reversal espoused by the poem. The sonnet, which is regarded as the quintessential poetic form for the expression of love, is here reversed and employed to express hatred. 'The White City' plays throughout its text with the reader's expectations generated by the sonnet form."

    12. White

      There are 14 references to the color white in Harlem Shadows.

    13. goaded

      Goaded, adj. /ˈɡoʊdɪŋ/ That causes annoyance, anxiety, offence, or pain, esp. so as to provoke an action or reaction; that spurs on or drives a person or (occasionally) animal to or into a particular action or state of mind by persistent incitement, irritation, or torment.

    14. strident

      Strident, adj. (and n.) /ˈstrʌɪdənt/ a. Making a harsh, grating or creaking noise; loud and harsh, shrill.