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Claude McKay
Within the universe, poetry has become one of the most outstanding forms of literature to the human imagination. It has provided a sense of humor, romance and a vision of beauty. This form of literature has led to the rise of poets such as Langston Hugh, Robert Frost, William Morris, Wilfred Owens, and Claude McKay. I intend to focus my attention on Jamiaca's greatest poet, Claude McKay.
According to Freda Scott Giles, in her article, Claude McKay was Born as Festus Claude McKay on September 15, 1890 in Sunnyville, Clarendon, Jamiaca West Indies, to Thomas Francis McKay and Ann Elizabeth Edwards. The youngest of eleven children, Mckay was sent at an early age to live with his older brother (a school teacher), so that he could be given the best education available. An avid reader, McKay began to write poetry at the age of ten.
Wayne Cooper in his book "Claude McKay, Rebel Sojourner in The Harlem Renaissance, A biography" as practical educator in South America, it appeared logical to the youngest poet to learn a craft and become a skilled tradesman. At that time the colonial government was encouraging vocational education, and learning the secrets of the skilled craft may have appealed to Claude's sense of humor. He took the Junior Teacher's Early Test and the Government's Trade Scholarship, however, misfortune played a role in young McKay's life. As stated by Cooper, he hardly settled in his new quarters before disaster struck. School had not yet started, and Claude was lying one afternoon reading a wild west thriller went his room suddenly buckled and crumbled as if some giant had crashed in the walls of the house. He managed to dashed uninjured into the streets where he experienced a chaos of trembling earth, and collapsing buildings. Along with most of Kingston, the trade school laid in ruins (pg. 21).
Freda Scott Giles said that in 1902 McKay came to the attention of Walter Jekylle, an English man residing on Jamaica, who became his mentor, encouraging him to write dialect verses. Jekylle later sent some of McKay's verses to music. Like most jamaicans who wanted a better life and thought that America was the place for such an opportunity, Claude McKay left Port Antonio at the age of twenty-one to the United States of America. According to Cooper, it was there that he encountered the harsh realities of American racism which would form the base of his subsequent writings. He soon left Tuskegee for Kansas State College in Manhattan, New York.
According to Giles, McKay eventually became an editor at the Liberator. In addition to writing various articles for a number of west wings publications. It was during the period of the racial violence against blacks known as the "Red Summer of 1919", McKay wrote one of the best known poems, the sonnet, "If We Must Die" an anthem of resistance later quoted by William [next page]