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Summary paper was weighted and graded as summary assignments during pandemic....

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CW #5 The Harlem Dancer by Claude McKay was a Sonnet because it followed the pattern A-B-A-B-CD-C-D-E-F-E-F-G-G. Prostitutes and Flutes are AA and sway and day are BB and so on. In the last two lines, the words face and place are GG. McKay uses this traditional form more than a fragmented modernist style because McKay believed it was a much better way to express his feelings and describe the girl in the poem. McKay is describing a dancer whom he finds attractive. She seems to be delicate and graceful from line 5 “She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,” all the while rhyming “calm” to “palm” when he later expresses how he feels about her using the sonnet rules in line 7 “To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm”. But McKay starts the poem very abrupt and on to the point when describing the background and whom it is about. In line 1 it says, “APPLAUDING youths laughed with young prostitutes” which tells us where the poem is taking place and immediately in line 2, McKay tells us who is the main character when he writes “And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;”. In the last 2 lines, McKay concludes telling us about what he thinks of the girl using her emotions. In line 13 it says “But, looking at her falsely-smiling face” which quickly reveals to us that below her beauty and her perfectness, there is sadness. Right after the next line it says, “I knew her self was not in that strange place.” McKay tells us this might not be the correct place for her to be at even if she excels in whatever she does, meaning it isn’t meant for her and she knows it because of the sadness that lies under her fake smile. I think McKay did a very good job expressing and describing many things in just a short poem, that it leaves the ending intriguing to figure out why the dancer seems to be unhappy and how the narrator found out her smile was fake. But in this length, I imagined the dancer to be very pretty and also standing out from the rest of the dancers at that place. Using metaphors, he described her to have a sweet voice and a gentle and graceful

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dancer as well. He also tells us she isn’t fully clothed from line 2 “And watched her perfect, halfclothed body sway;” and even describes her hair color from just one sentence in line 9 “Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls.” Even if this poem is very short and is using the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean Sonnet, it is very on to the point and expresses his exact feelings towards the female dancer. The message that is being conveyed is that we shouldn’t stereotype and be quick to judge someone because they might be going through difficulty silently or that they might just be unhappy with their lives....