#Claude McKay
Text
I'll Eat You Up, I Love You So
A Primer For the Small Weird Loves, Richard Siken | The Embrace II, Ron Hicks | Henry and June: From “A Journal of Love,” The Unexpurgated Diary (1931-1932) of Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller (@theoptia) | the night belongs to lovers, Ilaria Ratti | Dark. Sweet.: New & Selected Poems, Linda Hogan (@feral-ballad) | Intimacy, Angelica Alzona | Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across, Mary Lambert (@synbeam) | The Kiss, Edvard Munch | Summer Morn in New Hampshire, Claude McKay
#richard siken#ron hicks#henry miller#linda hogan#angelica alzona#mary lambert#edvard munch#claude mckay#webweaving#web weaving#dark academia#classic academia#light academia#poetry#literature
13K notes
·
View notes
Text
And all things were transfigured in the day
But me, whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.
-Claude McKay, "Summer Morn in New Hampshire"
#quote#quotes#Claude McKay#poetry#literature#African-American#African-American poetry#African-American literature#Black poetry#Black literature#love poetry#20th century literature#20th century poetry#Harlem Renaissance
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
If We Must Die by Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
December, 1919
by Claude McKay
Last night I heard your voice, mother,
The words you sang to me
When I, a little barefoot boy,
Knelt down against your knee.
And tears gushed from my heart, mother,
And passed beyond its wall,
But though the fountain reached my throat
The drops refused to fall.
'Tis ten years since you died, mother,
Just ten dark years of pain,
And oh, I only wish that I
Could weep just once again.
272 notes
·
View notes
Text
Claude McKay, American poet
#Claude McKay#McKay#American#America#USA#United States#US#1900's#Jamaican-American#Jamaican#Jamaica#1890#1890's#1800's#1948#1940's#Clarendon Parish#Chicago#Illinois
28 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like Rivers - Black Poets Read their work
2 x CD, Compilation, 2000
#poetry recording#poetry#recording#poets#CD#audre lorde#amiri baraka#nikki giovanni#tracie morris#langston hughes#WEb Dubois#Claude Mckay#James Weldon#Sterling A Brown#gwendolyn brooks#robert hayden#May aAngelou#Derek Walcott#The last poets#Lucille Clifton#Al Young#Sonia Sachez#Ishamel Reed#Wole Soyinka#Wanda Coleman#Gil Scott Heron#Rita Dove#Allison Joseph#Public Enemy
80 notes
·
View notes
Text
If We Must Die
BY CLAUDE MCKAY
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
we swore not to die on the kitchen floor
“Heel Turn 2” - The Mountain Goats / Book of Salt - Monique Truong / “If We Must Die” - Claude McKay / To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
96 notes
·
View notes
Text
On this Valentine's Day, 2024, I'd like to share 3 love poems with you.
It may not be obvious why these are love poems but please stick around to the end and I promise it'll make sense.
1. "If We Must Die" - Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
2. "When the day comes" - Shim Hoon
when the day comes when it comes
that even mount Samgak may rise and dance
the river Han will writhe, alive, like a dragon that day
that it may come before my life ends
with the crows that fly at night
I will aim at Chongno bell and ring it.
even if that should splinter my skull
but what han should remain after that joy.
that that day comes o! that day comes
I shall cry and laugh and roll on the large
road in front of Yookjo
and still should that not be enough
I should take a knife to make a leather of my skin
to turn it into a large drum to wear
at the front of the joyful procession.
should I hear that ringing sound just once
I could close my eyes without regrets.
3. "If I Must Die" - Refaat Alareer
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze —
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself —
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above,
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love.
If I must die
let it bring hope,
let it be a story.
The first two poems were written in 1919, on opposite sides of the world. Claude McKay was a young Jamaican Black man, writing about the oppression against Black people while Shim Hoon was a young Korean man, writing about the Japanese oppression against Koreans.
A little over 100 years later, a poet named Refaat Alareer would pen his last work in December of 2023, in Falasteen.
Yes - these are poems of love.
Love for a people, oppressed and hated by many.
Love for self, to document their current fight, for the future generation.
And none of these three people may be your direct ancestors but they are people who have gone ahead of us, walking a slightly different path, offering their words to us as a legacy. To remember what we fight for, to remember the hope in the future, for those of us that survive long enough to see it. Even if they may not.
I know there are so many horrors we have witnessed. Not just in Falasteen but in Sudan, in Congo, in Myanmar, and countless other places - in the name of oppression and greed and capitalism and colonization and imperialism.
But I hope these three poems serve as a reminder of what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Sending love to everyone.
--
*Translator's note - Shim Hoon's poem is a direct translation by me. Please do not repost the translation without credit.
#poetry#claude mckay#korean poem#korean history#falasteen#stop the genocide#free gaza#not sure how many people will see this#but i hope it gets to those who need it
7 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Claude McKay, If We Must Die (1919), in Soulscript. Afro-American Poetry, Edited by June Jordan, Zenith Books, Garden City, NY, 1970, p. 135 (text here)
41 notes
·
View notes
Text
Summer Morn in New Hampshire, Claude McKay
[ Text ID: For you, more wonderful, were far away, / And I was blind with hunger for your love. ]
#all i know of love is hunger#claude mckay#poetry#literature#my upload#dark academia#light academia#classic academia#black poets
217 notes
·
View notes
Text
Current reading is Harlem Shadows, the landmark 1922 poetry collection by the Jamaican-American author Claude McKay (1890-1948). To breathe new life into traditional forms like the sonnet, at a time when Modernism and free verse were overwhelmingly dominant, is impressive. To write of intense emotions--alienation, grief, rage--in a beautiful way is no less impressive. To do both at once is astonishing, and that is what McKay did. His work is an undying cri de coeur against racial injustice in both his native and his adopted countries, and it stands as one of the crowning achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.
#personal#current reading#poetry#literature#Claude McKay#African-American poetry#African-American literature#Black poetry#Black literature#Harlem Renaissance
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
"If We Must Die" by Claude McKay
If we must die - let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die - oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
To One Coming North
At first you'll joy to see the playful snow,
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air,
Or waters of the hills that softly flow
Gracefully falling down a shining stair.
And when the fields and streets are covered white
And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw,
Or underneath a spell of heat and light
The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,
Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song
Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry,
And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong,
Beneath a vivid silver-flecked blue sky.
But oh! more than the changeless southern isles,
When Spring has shed upon the earth her charm,
You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles
By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm.
Claude McKay
#it's national poetry month!!!#claude mckay#to one coming north#poetry#ray sent me this poem in a beautiful card when i moved to montreal so i'll always have a soft spot for it :')#god i love claude mckay so much#this is so beautiful#he's so playful and joyful here#You'll love the Northland wreathed in golden smiles#By the miraculous sun turned glad and warm#🥰
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
The White House
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
Claude McKay
22 notes
·
View notes
Text
One hundred years ago today, on 30 November 1922, two Black revolutionaries - Otto Huiswoud & Claude McKay - led the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in adopting a world strategy for Black liberation.
Source : @ROAPEjournal
#Black Revolutionary History#Pan Africanism#Black archives#Otto Huiswoud#Claude McKay#Black communists#Internationalism
22 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
kahn-syzz
sidekicK
mrsraulesparza
belt and suspenders
karenfordonte
Caring For Donte
uvupotatogirl
Heya!
villanelleisabottom
eve polastri pegs