MODERN POETRY, MODERN COMMUNICATION

Do you think that Claude McKay actually wrote the following, or that I invented the passage?

"I have always felt that it could fit any people or nation which was suffering from the hands of an aggressor. One morning I turned on my radio and a commentator was talking about a friend who had recently died on the Russian Front. The commentator went on to say that this friend of his hated injustice and had loved poetry and there were about six favorite poems, which he had always carried with him. And he would like to read one of them. And he read, If We Must Die, from beginning to end. Of course, my name was not mentioned as the author, nor my book. But I felt compensated enough that the poem was read. For I knew then, as I had always known that it, If We Must Die, was not a race poem, but a universal poem."

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Last modified: Wednesday, 20-Jun-2007 06:13:50 EDT