Poetry for All Transcript for Episode 5: Claude McKay, ÒAmericaÓÊ Abram:Ê Hello. IÕm Abram Van Engen, an English Professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. Joanne: And IÕm Joanne Diaz, a poet and English Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University.Ê Abram:Ê And this is Poetry for All. Joanne: This podcast is for those who already love poetry and for those who know very little about it.Ê Abram: In this podcast, weÕll read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.Ê Joanne: Today, we are going to take a look at an important poem of the Harlem Renaissance: ÒAmericaÓ by Claude McKay. Should I read this poem? Abram: Please do. Joanne: Okay. ÒAmericaÓ by Claude McKay.Ê Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tigerÕs 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 TimeÕs unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. Ê Abram: Ê Hm. ThatÕs so good. I think itÕs important to begin a poem like this by understanding who Claude McKay was and why he would write a poem like this. So Claude McKay was born in Jamaica and grew up there and wrote a really wide range of poetry, prose, fiction. He came to America in 1912, went to New York in 1914, and was in New York, in Harlem, in the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties, and he ended up traveling to France, and North Africa, all over the place. So he was really very much a Black, transatlantic writer of the early twentieth century. But to provide a little bit more cultural context for a poem like this: whatÕs happening around 1921, where does this poem appear, and how does that help us make sense of it?Ê Ê Joanne: Ê It seems important to recognize that this poem was published in 1921, in a literary magazine called _The Liberator_. It was a literary and political thought magazine; it was a vehicle of the Communist Party in America, and as such it was very concerned with publishing essays, poems, stories all having to do with the material conditions and exploitation of ordinary people and people of color in the United States. The other reason 1921 really sticks out to me is because Claude McKay is writing this poem against the backdrop of race riots that were erupting all over the United StatesÑBaltimore in 1919, Chicago also in 1919, Tulsa in 1921, and then a couple years later, Rosewood, Florida. So heÕs really thinking about all the ways in which the very country that is so cultured, so full of wonders and treasures, is also Hell to the people who labor for it and are discriminated against so badly in it. ItÕs a very difficult moment in American history that I feel this poem is directly responding to.Ê Ê Abram: Ê And yet the way that he writes about it, the form he chooses to write about it, is a sonnet. WhatÕs interesting about that is that of course, a sonnet is very traditional...and it has this long English history and then an Italian history before that. And so when you think about this as a part of the sonnet tradition, what do you see him doing with that sonnet tradition? How do you see him pulling on that sonnet tradition to write about things like racial justice?Ê Ê Joanne: Ê I love that he chose the sonnet form to write this poem because of course the sonnet form is five hundred years old. It started with Petrarch in Italy, it went through Shakespeare and John Donne in the Renaissance, and contemporary poetsÑeven in the twenty-first centuryÑare writing sonnets. Why would they do it? How is it that this is a form that is so resilient and can cross so many time periods and styles and voices and themes. One way that he is drawing upon the past and giving it a different spin is he is speaking of America and gendering her as a woman. So, he is in love with this cruel mistress, America, who both feeds him and damages him. And that reminds me of a lot of the poems, the sonnets from the Renaissance, where you have a male poetic speaker whoÕs madly in love with a female object of desire that abuses him or neglects him or avoids him altogether. So thatÕs just one way that I feel like Claude McKay is drawing from that sonnet tradition and innovating in brand new ways. What else do you see, Abram?Ê Ê Abram: Ê What I love about this poem so much is that, as he says, he stands within her walls, he stands within the walls of this tradition, a very rigid tradition of very definite rhyme schemes, quatrains and so forth. And at the same time is resistant to it. So, when you break down this poem, for example, in many ways itÕs a traditional Shakespearean sonnet. There are three quatrains, that is three sets of four lines each, and then a couplet at the end; thatÕs a four-four-four-two kind of sonnet, thatÕs a Shakespearean sonnet. And yet, if you look at the imagery and the lines, what heÕs actually set up here is a structure that goes: four lines, three lines, three lines, four lines. The first four lines are a confession of love for a cruel mistress. The next three lines are all this imagery of tides and floods within his blood. The next three lines are the imagery of a rebel whoÕs at court, a kind of espionage image. And the four lines are four lines of prophecy, where America is headed. And so heÕs actuallyÑwithin a traditional sonnetÑtwisting against it withÊ a different kind of structure, and the imagery is all about four-three-three-four within a four-four-four-two kind of sonnet.Ê Ê Joanne: Ê The reason what you say is so interesting to me is because this is a poem that really pushes and pulls against itself. Everything that it sets up, it then pulls back on. Here is Claude McKay using this amazing sonnet form, but innovating within the form. Here, he is acknowledging that he wants to resist what America is doing to him and yet, he canÕt. So, looking at those sections that you articulated, Abram, look at the second section. So IÕm looking at line five: ÒHer vigor flows like tides into my blood, / Giving me strength erect against her hate, / Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.Ó Look at that liquid imagery and how the borders of this poetic speakerÕs body keep getting invaded by these tides that go in and out;Êand again, both nourish and deplete him.Ê Ê Abram: Ê WhatÕs amazing too about that imagery there, first of all it gets at this central dynamic imagery of, as you say, the giving and the taking both at once, the tides that come and go. But it also gives you a kind of preview of where the poem is going. So these tides and this flood sets up a kind of beach imagery which we return to at the very end when we see the priceless treasures sinking into the sand.Ê Ê Joanne: Ê You know, the longer you look at this poem, the more intricate and innovative you see it is. And youÕve already talked about some of those formal restraints that Claude McKay imposed upon himself to write this poem. Another shape within the shapes youÕve described is itÕs a fourteen-line sonnet, and thereÕs sort of this, again, this bifurcated shell. WeÕve seen this before in other poems, but itÕs like a perfectly symmetrical poem where you have two halves that are broken by the word ÒYet.Ó And that word ÒYetÓ seems really important because even though thereÕs a lot of push and pull in this poem, even though he has been very explicit about the damage this nation has done to the poetic speakerÕs body and spirit. HeÕs faced with a choice in line eight, and the choice that the poetic speaker makes is not to outright rebel, not to stage defiance, not to enact explicit resistance, but to act like a spy within the state. Look what he does there: ÒYet, 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.ÓÊ Ê Abram: Ê So, we have this historical term called apothesis which is basically a word that means when you draw attention to something by saying: ÒDonÕt think about that thing.Ó So donÕt think thereÕs a blue elephant in the room. Well, itÕs hard not to picture that thing now, right? So he says donÕt think about terror, malice and jeer. Well, thatÕs what you begin to think about. So, he says: ÒI stand within her walls with not a shred / Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.Ó Ê Joanne: Ê But heÕs listed those so you remember them. You remember heÕs capable of having them, heÕs just putting them away and sort of reminding you that thereÕs the potential for them there. Ê Abram: Ê Yeah, he trots them out for you to see them: ÒThese are all the things that are possible!ÓÊ Ê Joanne: [laughs] Yeah. Ê Abram: Ê Ò...And yet, I will now put them away.Ó And the other thing that he does is really interesting to me about this line...if you look at most of the poem, each line is pretty fluid, each line tends to begin at the beginning and go all the way to the end before you pause. And yet, in this line: ÒOf terror,Ó comma, Òmalice,Ó comma, Ònot a word of jeer.Ó He forces you to linger on the word ÒmaliceÓ as though he himself is lingering on that word, sort of tasting malice ahead of timeÑalmost wanting itÑand then finally resisting it.Ê Ê Joanne: Ê Wow. Ê Abram: Ê So, ÒOf terror, malice, not a word of jeer.ÓÊ Ê Joanne: Ê ThatÕs incredible. And the reason he puts them away is because he, as the poet,Ê has the gift of prophecy. And so for me, the final four lines of the poem are a real insight into what he can do. The notion that the poem and the poet function prophetically. ÒDarkly I gaze into the days ahead, / And see her might and granite wonders there, / Beneath the touch of TimeÕs unerring hand, / Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.Ó And youÕve already talked about the Òsinking in the sandÓ motif, but there are so many wonderful words in this final four lines.Ê Ê Abram: Ê Yeah. I mean, this is another place where he is again referring back to the tradition that he stands within and resists at the same time. HeÕs turning this tradition on its head even as heÕs mastering it. And here, heÕs making a reference to ShelleyÕs poem ÒOzymandias.Ó So, Shelley wrote this poem about the great statue of Ramesses II which was in effect falling into ruin and crumbling into the sand, the lines of which read: ÒRound the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.Ó And so, by making a reference back to Shelley, he both puts himself in this tradition, but he also brings this tradition to bear on America itself, just like these ruins you have seen of old. Uh, you are on your way to the same end Òlike priceless treasures sinking in the sand.Ó Ê Joanne: Ê You know, as I hear you talk about the end of this poem, Abram, I canÕt help but think of the insight of this poem; which is: even if Claude McKayÕs speaker is not staging an outright rebellion or resistance against America, maybe his gift is prophecy, right? So, poet means maker, but the word poet has Latin roots which means Òseer.Ó Like, having an oracular, sort of prophetic quality; the idea that a poet is capable of seeing things that others cannot. That seems to be the poetic speakerÕs gift, and maybe thatÕs his power that he will use as time goes on.Ê Ê Abram: Ê Yes, and whatÕs also kind of amazing about that last bit of the poem there is that weÕve talked about in other episodes about how you can identify certain features of a poem that track through it, or erase everything except one thing. And if you erase all the words in this poem except the verbs that end in ÒingÓÑthose are the verbs that are ongoing, that are active, that are presentÑwhat you get are Òstealing,Ó Ògiving,Ó and Òsinking.Ó And what that really does in this poem is it reveals the sort of heart and narrative of this poem. This is an America that is stealing from him, and in the very act of stealing from him, giving to him a kind of inner strength of resistance, even as the very acts of stealing and giving make America sink into the sand. So it is stealing, giving and sinking all at once.Ê Ê Joanne: Ê Wow. Abram, with all that you just said in mind, would you please read this poem again? Ê Abram: Ê Yes. ÒAmericaÓ by Claude McKay.ÊÊ Ê Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tigerÕs 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 TimeÕs unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. Ê Joanne: Ê So great. For more on Claude McKay, please visit our website. Ê Abram: Ê And please follow Poetry for All on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Ê Joanne: Ê Thank you for listening. Ê Ê Ê Ê Ê Ê