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Known best as a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, Claude McKay also contributed significantly to the history of sonnet writing. Several of his poems are examined in the context of the history of sonnets, and ideas for teaching the form are suggested.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets-an excellent moment to focus on them, as well as on those written by others before and after 1609. Because we share an enthusiasm for poetry in general and the sonnet in particular, we want to encourage teachers to include sonnets in their teaching. Under the aegis of the Folger, we have been leading sonnet workshops for high school teachers in which we offer several activities for bringing sonnets into language arts classes.
The collaboration has been a voyage of discovery for us both; what were initially two separate presentations have gradually evolved into an unlikely but surprisingly coherent unit plan. We begin with a discussion of the sonnet tradition and examine several 20th-century sonnets. We then look at several 16th-century sonnets by Shakespeare's contemporaries followed by Shakespearean examples. The final step takes us back to the early 20th century and the work of Claude McKay. The journey represents an innovative "pairing" that can place an African American poet as the heir to a long sonnet tradition, one who himself, in his turn, left a lasting legacy.1
The following are some of the approaches and ideas that we include in our workshops:
* Starting with 20th-century sonnets can provide a great way to ease into Shakespearean sonnets, which in turn provide gateways to Shakespeare's plays; the smaller blocks of language are less intimidating than a whole play script.
* Students can follow the "recipe" and write their own sonnets. We find that students are often more apt to write good poetry with that model than when they embark on free verse. Writing sonnets can be done solo, in pairs, or as a group and is an active way of internalizing the sonnet's structure.
* One group activity is to ask students to work backward by choosing the end rhymes of the typical Shakespearean pattern first and then fill in the rest.
* "Petrarchanism" is alive and...