"Poem of the Week: Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay""Like other poets of the Harlem Renaissance, McKay, though a powerful advocate of black liberation, took the dominant 'voice' of traditional culture, mastered it and made it accommodate his different ways of seeing, his visions and his anger. The fusion of urban realism with more traditional Romantic tropes in 'Harlem Shadows' still leaves room for clear blasts of rage against 'the wretched way / Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace.'"viaTHE GUARDIAN |
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What Sparks Poetry:Jenny Browne on Jane Mead’s “The Lord and The General Din of the World”"Can a description of an empty bottle of blue cheese dressing change your life? I wouldn’t have wagered it, but I never forgot that “steady grating” and how Mead’s poem pointed the way forward. Because I didn’t know you could put stuff like that in a poem, by which I mean the stuff my actual life felt made of, let alone hold it right next to God, whoever she was. I had thought being a poet meant I had to learn to write (and see) like Rilke, but now I thought maybe I might try to be (and listen) like Jane Mead." |
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