Selected Poems Claude McKay

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ISBN: 9781639239962

£9.65

Book Description

The worldwide
appeal of McKay’s “If We Must Die,”
which Winston Churchill
quoted in a speech against the Nazi during World War II, adequately
demonstrates his literary value of him beyond his vehement condemnations of
racial intolerance and injustice.

Songs of Jamaica
and contab ballads, two dialect poetry collections written by McKay when he was
living in Jamaica, were well-read there. The poet recreated the folklore and
rural lifestyle of his native country in a truly realistic vernacular. A sample
selection of this dialect verse, as well as previously uncollected poems and a
sizable number of Harlem shadows poems in standard English, are all included in
the current edition, which has been painstakingly edited and comes with an
introduction by scholar Joan R. Sherman.