In the pantheon of American literary history, few figures embody the contradictions and complexities of the twentieth century quite like Claude McKay. Born Festus Claudius McKay on September 15, 1890, in the verdant hills of Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, this poet, novelist, and essayist would become one of the most powerful voices of the Harlem Renaissance, despite spending much of his life in restless exile from the m…
“Then I soon found myself hating in return; but this feeling couldn't last long for to hate is to be miserable.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
George Marion McClellan was born on 29 September 1860 near Belfast, Tennessee, and died on 17 May 1934. His lifetime stretched from the final year of slavery in the United States through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the consolidation of Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance. To read his poetry only as the work of a minor late-Victorian versifier would be to miss the extraordinary his…
“They who write for us and fight our battles are essentially our only spokesmen.”
Neighbourhood:
African American Poets, American Poets, Death & Mortality, Harlem Renaissance, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
