Claude McKay stood out for many reasons as a poet in the twentieth century; according to Ramazani, McKay’s Afro-Caribbean and African American influences contributed largely to the “masterful creole verse of later Jamaican poets,” yet he strove to exist beyond any cultural limitations and wrote in Standard English, even adopting the primary form of the sonnet (499, 499). However, instead of committing to the traditional romanticized notions affiliated with the sonnet form, McKay infused his poetry with “‘life long hate’ into the typically love-filled rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter of the Shakespearean sonnet” (499). By challenging the ideals associated with the sonnet, McKay’s work stands out amongst others, as his poems are filled with an intense “tension” created by the neat juxtaposition between the “strict form” of the sonnet and “molten subject” material (499). As Vanderzee explained in his email, McKay faced a unique perspective “as a black poet in the very much white-washed world of poetry,” one that enabled him to touch on the realities of a racially segregated world.
“The Harlem Dancer” may be construed as a response to McKay’s own experience as someone who lived in Harlem working “odd jobs” to support himself while he continued to write poetry during World War I (499). The context of this poem may be one of a realistic depiction of Harlem at the time, where night clubs with scantily clad dancers were a normal form of entertainment for a predominantly white audience. McKay describes a vivid scene: a dancer, “her perfect, half-clothed body” and her voice like “the sound of blended flutes” who is the object of attention, however McKay is careful to bring beauty to a somewhat seedy-subject matter. He gives the scene luxurious connotations by describing her dance as “graceful and calm,” and details how her “shiny curls/luxuriant fell.” Yet he is certain to bring the reader back to the startling reality of the scenario where the dancer is the object of greedy voyeuristic eyes, ones that are there “tossing coins in praise,” and “devour[ing] her shape with eager, passionate gaze[s].” Despite the somewhat degrading sense of the poem, McKay closes “The Harlem Dancer” with two lines which subtly indicate the quiet radical nature of this otherwise belittled dancer, as he writes: “But looking at her falsely-smiling face,/ I knew her self was not in that strange place.” Perhaps McKay closes the poem this way to indicate to readers a sense of righteousness in the shadow of racial segregation and gender oppression. In these final lines the reader may understand the dancer as being able to exist beyond the predetermined social contexts of her existence as a prostitute in a nightclub, as he gives us a sense of her true nature, one latent with pride and an inherent knowing that she is not defined by the act she is performing or the eyes subjecting her to a degraded place, rather, she maintains the secret understanding that she is above it all, and does not mentally exist in the space she physically occupies at that time.
Similarly, we see a sense of voyeurism and spectacle in McKay’s “The Lynching,” which has undertones of both a religious and a racial nature. He describes a scene where a man is brought to his death as a result of committing an “awful sin” which “remained still unforgiven.” McKay suggests that it is perhaps by the “solitary star” of fate that this man’s actions guided him to committing a sin so unforgivable that it indeed defined him as someone worthy of such a gruesome death. We can identify the similarity between these two McKay poems when we look at the latter half of “The Lynching,” which describes the man’s body as an image of his moral integrity, one “hung pitifully o’er the swinging char,” serving as a show to those that came to watch. This man becomes the very object of a sin, as his “ghastly body” remains “swaying in the sun” for “mixed crowds [who] came to view” the very result of committing an unforgivable act. Also similar to “The Harlem Dancer,” McKay closes “The Lynching” with a final two lines which hold the most weight of the poem: “And little lads, lynchers that were to be,/ Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.” This startling image of children dancing around the dead body almost parallels the grotesque nature of the dead body itself, because it details the type of uninhibited voyeurism that enraptures society so much so that it is predicted to carry on to the next generation; a perpetual sense of satisfaction found in the failure of others.
It is interesting to look at “Harlem Dancer” as a reflection of Mckay or any African American of this time. They entertained the white society in order to provide for themselves true, but they were also on a mission to fit into this society. African Americans entertained to gain a spot amongst the big names, this may not be true for the dancer but it is certainly true for poets like Mckay and Hughes as well as other entertainers such as musicians and the like. This idea is recognized in Mckay’s use of the sonnet; the structure originated in the white society and Mckay follows the structure but replaces the romantic content with images that reveal the lives of African Americans at this time. The structure attracted the white audience while the content may angered them but was moving to the African American audience. Mckay modernized the sonnet by altering the content in order to fit in with the greats, or at least be recognized for his efforts.
I really like the emphasis on spectacle and voyeurism here. Both of these poems are about watching and being watched. And that gaze can be as constraining as more material measures of inequality. In the Harlem Dancer sonnet this sense of watching doubles as a reflection on McKay doing his own “dance” in sonnet form. He also exists in that strange place, and the result is what W.E.B. DuBois called a certain “double consciousness” (I quote from him here):
“this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face”