Intimidation
With 'America' by Claude McKay
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Hello Loreates,
This image and this poem (from a century ago, lest anyone think the current state of reality is new) evoke the complex and contradictory emotions that so many of us are feeling this week, as the current U.S. president unilaterally and unconstitutionally orders the bombing of a foreign country and the kidnapping of countless innocent individuals (U.S. citizens increasingly among the undocumented) and menaces our nation and allies for so much as questioning his authority.
“As a rebel fronts a king in state,” we all stand now darkly gazing into the days ahead.
Aimee
America
By Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
Claude McKay, born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Jamaica in 1889, was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems that protested racial and economic inequities. His philosophically ambitious fiction, including tales of Black life in both Jamaica and America, addresses instinctual/intellectual duality, which McKay found central to the Black individual’s efforts to cope in a racist society. He is the author of The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose (1973), The Dialectic Poetry of Claude McKay (1972), Selected Poems (1953), Harlem Shadows (1922), Constab Ballads (1912), and Songs of Jamaica (1912), among many other books of poetry and prose.
Copyright Credit: Claude McKay, "America" from Liberator (December 1921).
Source: Poetry Foundation; Liberator (The Library of America, 1921)
Metaphortography offers a quick dose of visual and literary inspiration to launch your writing week. This is the Monday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. Our Wednesday section is Writer In The World, a curated collection of essays on the writing life by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni. Writers in Conversation and other MFA Lore essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday.
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