Complete Poems

A pioneer of black modernism, Claude McKay's varied and influential books include the poetry collections Harlem Shadows and Songs of Jamaica, and the novels Banjo, Home to Harlem, and Banana Bottom.William J. Maxwell is an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of the award-winning New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism between the Wars.

"A volume that no student of the Harlem Renaissance, the leftist interwar period, dissident sexuality studies, the Catholic worker movement, or negritude, diaspora, and Caribbean language literature can live without. . . . Maxwell's skillful salvaging of remote primary material, thorough scholarship, and original criticism substantially reconfigure how we understand the diaspora cruising author, rendering intelligible much that has mystified and sometimes disconcerted [us]. . . . A vital contribution to black studies." - African American Review"Maxwell's introduction offers a fascinating overview of McKay's life and a spirited defense of his poetry." - Los Angeles Times"Maxwell has edited this comprehensive volume superbly, hunting down every last poem. . . . [He] has deepened our sense of McKay's life and increased our respect for the independence of mind behind all his work." - Times Literary Supplement"A brilliant introduction . . . cause for celebration!" - Virginia Quarterly Review"Claude McKay's Complete Poems comes as an invaluable gift to all lovers of McKay, African-American literature, and literature in general. McKay's eminence among poets of the Harlem Renaissance is richly documented in this scrupulous collection. With a lively, always perceptive introduction and meticulous notes, Complete Poems stands as the definitive gathering of the verse of a writer who saw early the beauty and humanity of the black world at home and abroad." - Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes and the Sara Hart Kimball Professor of the Humanities, Stanford University."This is a wonderful book. McKay is a hugely important figure in the development of Caribbean and African American poetry, and bringing his poems together in one place does an invaluable service to readers of all backgrounds. Maxwell's outstanding introduction is the most insightful and cogent critical assessment of McKay's poetry to date." - James Smethurst, author of The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946