The Harlem Dancer

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1917

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“The Harlem Dancer” is a sonnet written in iambic pentameter. It follows the traditional English style of 14 lines with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF and the rhyming couplet of GG to finish the poem. Traditionally the first three quatrains (stanzas of four lines) present a problem while the last two lines (the volta) pivot the poem and serve as a comment on the first 12 lines. As Jericho Brown contends, McKay knew the masters of the English sonnet from Shakespeare to Keats well and subverted that traditional form “to inscribe the fact of his own Blackness and the existence of real-life, feeling, thinking, and reading Black people, thereby interrogating the value of the form itself. Is the sonnet somehow less an achievement when a Black man makes one?” In other words, McKay did not write about topics traditionally explored by white authors but used the sonnet to examine the Black lives he experienced in his daily life in Harlem or in his Jamaican past.

Ethnic Imagery

To clarify the ethnicity of the dancer in “The Harlem Dancer” the speaker uses auditory and visual imagery. Besides the title, which locates the poem in the Black neighborhood of Harlem, the first image that clarifies the dancer’s ethnicity is the speaker’s description of the dancer’s voice. It “was like the sound of blended flutes / Blown by black players upon a picnic day” (Line 4). This aligns the dancer with other Black performers, in this case, musicians. Later, the speaker’s description of the dancer’s “black shiny curls” (Line 9) against her “swarthy neck” (Line 9) suggests her skin tone and quality of her hair. This notation is then contrasted with a description of the “wine-flushed” (Line 11) patrons, which suggests their skin is light enough to show an alcohol-induced blush upon the cheeks. Harlem was known for its white-only clubs that featured floorshows by Black performers. By using these descriptions in the poem, McKay clarifies that the speaker is observing how the Black female body is eroticized by the white male clientele. This in turn helps to make his poem a political statement about exploitation and equity.

Enjambment

Poets use enjambment (a line continuing on to the next line) as a way to help create double-meaning or tension in a poem. This can help to surprise and/or enlighten the reader. In “The Harlem Dancer,” this technique is used several times to undercut seemingly lofty images with more down-to-earth ones. One of the most obvious examples is in the description of the dancer’s singing voice, which sounds like “blended flutes” (Line 3). At first, this image might call to mind music from ancient Greece, but it is quickly clarified in the next line to be fully American in nature. These instruments are “[b]lown by black players on a picnic day” (Line 4). We see this again as we learn the dancer’s “proudly-swaying palm” (Line 7) persona is actually “lovelier for passing through a storm” (Line 8). This shows how beauty and resilience come from surviving hardship. At first “tossing coins in praise” (Line 10), a notation at the end of the line seems like a form of worship, but the worshippers are “wine-flushed, bold-eyes boys […] [who] / Devoured her” (Line 12). This use of enjambment challenges the reader's expectations and draws attention to the real experience of the dancer in order to humanize her.