Poem of the Week

Poetry as Outsider Song: Claude McKay



The Tropics of New York

Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,

Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing trills,
And dewy. And mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.

My eyes drew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.


McKay’s ability to use verse as a soapbox for his political woes is well documented in his corpus of dissident poems. However, there are parts in his work that are stripped of any severe agendas, moments of tender honesty and nostalgia. In “The Tropics of New York,” we are invited to glimpse at the man, utterly and totally submerged, in his loneliness. It almost reads more like journal entry, as if McKay is talking only to himself:

Banana ripe and green, and ginger-root
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
…………………………
Set in the windows, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing hills,
And dewy, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills

The naming of the fruits suddenly transcends into the naming of landscapes. The alligator pears bring
forth the low-singing hills and dewy blue skies. The fruit is a symbol of their origins and seeing them
swell a deep sense of nostalgia and wistfulness in the speaker. This is another reminder of the painful paradoxes of America; in its wealth it can offer almost anything and, in this case, fruits of the tropics. Yet, it can never recreate the authenticity of the speaker’s native land. The poem ends with the poet surrendering to his flood of emotions. It is a heartfelt scene of compromise: the heroic verse that rallied the masses to passionate revolution is now the weary and disheartened lament for something as simple as a brief memory of home:

My eyes drew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.


The work is necessary for understanding the plight of the immigrant in America. It humanizes the outsider and makes him more legitimate in his suffering. This poem is McKay at his most sincere; it a poem of pure cathartic means and gives us the clearest glimpse of his despair. It is the rabble rouser taking off his mask only to bow his head and question his efforts, his purpose in a strange and relentless land of racism, unrest, and massive economic differences. It is too often that even the fiercest poet will soon dismiss his agenda and succumb to his vulnerable heart, as evidenced through McKay's lament for his home.

-Ocean Vuong

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