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How did Claude McKay use the sonnet form in Harlem Renaissance poetry?

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The Weary Blues cover — Harlem Renaissance Dust jacket designed by the Mexican illustrator and writer Miguel Covarrubias for Langston Hughes's *The Weary Blues* (1926), a book of experimental poetry.

Claude McKay, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance, utilized the sonnet form by adapting traditional English poetic structures to express contemporary, race-conscious themes. After moving to the United States, he abandoned the Jamaican dialect of his early work in favor of standard English, employing formal stanzaic structures to convey his experiences and political views.1

McKay famously repurposed the sonnet for political invective, most notably in his militant poem "If We Must Die." Beyond political protest, he used the form to explore a range of personal and social subjects, including nostalgia for his Caribbean homeland, themes of love, and the experience of exile, as seen in works like "The Tropics in New York" and "Harlem Dancer." His approach blended a romantic sensibility—influenced by poets such as Percy Bysshe Shelley—with a revolutionary and race-conscious perspective, demonstrating how traditional forms could be effectively turned to new, radical uses.12