Poem of the Day: Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer"

Everywhere issues relating to gender and race are bandied about, these days. What is there more of racism, sexism, we have all asked it. Sometimes we are tempted to wax Pollyanna, and focus on how much better off we are as a country in these areas than we ever were. After all, it is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vying for the Demo nomination.

Sometimes we brood, and focus on South Carolina ground games and toilet seats ornamented by a prominent female politician's face. In these moments we are not so Pollyanna, but in strange fevered dreams we imagine our enemies as bigoted caricatures utterly devoid of human content, callow beings who love neither children nor puppies, whose greatest sense of purpose emanates from parroting language specially designed to denigrate.

But let us step back and revisit one of the masters, Claude McKay, the poet many credit with kickstarting the Harlem Renaissance in 1922 when he released Harlem Shadows into the public discourse. No Pollyanna, McKay used the cultural hammer of the Sonnet, perfectly executed, but within those lines obtains a riot of social and aesthetic protest, not only on behalf of African Americans and women, but in sympathy with oppressed peoples throughout the world. Harrogate provides it here, free of charge.

APPLAUDING youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls
Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze;
But, looking at her falsely-smiling face
I knew her self was not in that strange place.