Claude McKay, sonnets, and Spring in New Hampshire (the poem)

Yesterday, I worked through a series of poems by Claude McKay with my AmLit students; tight, painful sonnets, and other poems that cut through the heart, poems that shine a light on the tragic situation surrounding African-Americans in the 1920s-40s, the time of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay is a tough nut to crack, really: he goes from writing a devastating sonnet about a lynching to the poem "America," in which he states, "I love this cultured hell...." 

We talked about how a sonnet, with its standardized rhyme and meter and rules, is sometimes the perfect vessel to hold enormous and painful topics. The form of the traditional sonnet, driven by sonnet logic (situation, discussion, solution, summation) is essayistic, and can present a full argument in a small space. It works. 

That said, there's also this little poem by McKay, which always surprises me-- a poet from Jamaica, who lived and worked in Harlem, writes about spring in New Hampshire? Go figure. The surprise of the poem is just about as surprising as some of the images in it. For a poet who wrote so directly about fear, abuse, and trauma to write about flowers and spring? It's lovely. And, for me, too, the call of spring is luring me outside.

Have a good day,

C

Spring in New Hampshire

Too green the springing April grass, 
Too blue the silver-speckled sky, 
For me to linger here, alas, 
While happy winds go laughing by, 
Wasting the golden hours indoors, 
Washing windows and scrubbing floors. 

Too wonderful the April night, 
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, 
The stars too gloriously bright, 
For me to spend the evening hours, 
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping, 
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.