Claude McKay is another poet I’ve never heard of before, who was writing long enough ago that his works are out of copyright. It says here at the link:
The son of peasant farmers [in Jamaica], McKay was infused with pride in his African heritage. His early literary interests, though, were in English poetry. Under the tutelage of his brother, schoolteacher Uriah Theophilus McKay, and a neighboring Englishman, Walter Jekyll, McKay studied the British masters—including John Milton, Alexander Pope, and the later Romantics—and European philosophers such as eminent pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, whose works Jekyll was then translating from German into English. It was Jekyll who advised aspiring poet McKay to write verse in Jamaican dialect.
I think it’s a very good idea to focus on the Romantic poets at some point, if you want to write poetry at all. I actually just stumbled across this because we’re here at the entrance to summer; June is right around the corner, so I googled “summer poetry” or something of the sort. This was one of the poems that popped up, and I think you can see the influence of the Romantics.
Summer Morn in New Hampshire
All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.
*****
Here’s another, much fiercer
*****
If We Must Die
If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
*****
Let me try to find one in Jamaican dialect … nothing at Poetry Foundation seems to fit the bill … Okay, these were published in a collection called Songs of Jamaica, available here. Here’s a poem from this collection:
*****
Taken Aback
Let me go, Joe, for I want go home:
Can’t stan’ wid you,
For pa might go come;
An’ if him only hab him rum,
I don’t know whatever I’ll do.
I must go now, for it’s gettin’ night
I am afraid,
An’ tis not moonlight:
Give me de last hug, an’ do it tight;
Me pa gwin’ go knock off me head.
No, Joe, don’t come!–you will keep me late,
An’ pa might be
In him sober state;
Him might get vex’ an’ lock up de gate,
Den what will becomin’ of me?
Go wid you, Joe? — you don’t lub me den!
I shame’ o’ you–
Gals caan’ trust you men!
An’ I b’en tekin’ you fe me frien’;
Good-night, Joe, you’ve proven untrue.
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