Informed as much by his upbringing in his native Jamaica as by his embrace, as an immigrant in New York City, of the heady, idealistic rhetoric of Communism—with its heroic glorification of the downtrodden workers of the world—Claude McKay’s “Joy in the Woods” (1920) laments the dilemma of the modern worker torn between the love of the freedom and beauty of nature and the onerous, soul-numbing responsibilities of work.

Although now celebrated as one of the leading voices in the Harlem Renaissance, a near decade-long flowering of the arts among Black writers, artists, sculptors, and musicians centered in the bustling neighborhoods of Harlem, McKay here reveals why positioning him with the Harlem Renaissance might be problematic. If those artists celebrated the vibrant hum and rattle of city life, McKay here reveals he is not so certain that the cityscape is all that therapeutic or invigorating.

In this dilemma, McKay’s poem becomes a lamentation, a wistful acknowledgement that the contemporary worker, trapped by the pointless, endless monotony of routine as the only way to meet obligations and pay bills, is left with only the memory, really the craving, for the stunning wonders of nature from which the working class is now alienated.

Poet Biography

Festus Claudius McKay was born 15 September 1890 in the sparsely populated village of Sunny Ville along the sun-washed coast of south-central Jamaica. Although his family was large (11 children), McKay enjoyed a childhood of comparative privilege. His father assumed McKay would learn the work of running the family’s lucrative farm with its cash crops of coffee, bananas, and sugar, but young McKay was enamored early on by the books shared with him by his older brother, an English teacher. McKay read with fascination Shakespeare, Donne, the great Romantics, ironic given these were the iconic literary figures of the very nation that had long occupied and exploited Jamaica. With the encouragement of his mother, McKay dreamed of being a poet, but he understood such work did not pay bills. To support himself, McKay worked first as a laborer in a match factory and later joined the local police department. Biographers now believe a clandestine affair with a fellow officer revealed to McKay the nature of his sexual orientation.

McKay published his first volume of poetry in 1912. Songs of Jamaica was an interrelated cycle of poems, mostly ballads, that captured the rhythms and the rich dialects of the island. Because of his aspirations to write, McKay then departed Jamaica for the United States—he thought the island although idyllic lacked the cultural complexity for which he yearned. He never returned to his island-home. Arriving first in South Carolina, McKay quickly confronted the reality of segregation and racism. After starting but not completing college study in agriculture, first in Alabama and then Kansas, McKay went to New York City in 1914. He married and worked briefly as a restauranteur in Brooklyn—his heart was not in either endeavor and both quickly floundered. When the business failed, McKay, supporting himself as a railroad porter but determined now to be a writer, committed himself to poetry.

His works began to appear in influential Black magazines and newspapers. Many of his poems reflected both his discontent over racism (most notably his much anthologized “If We Must Die”) and as well his growing sympathies for the plight of the working class and his embrace of the hope and optimism of Communism, which promised a brave new tomorrow once the working class shook off the shackles of economic oppression. Those leftist-leaning poems attracted the attention and approbation of Max Eastman (1883-1969), one of the leading figures in the burgeoning American Communist movement. Under Eastman’s mentorship, McKay departed for Europe, first Holland, and then Belgium, and finally London. It was during that time that McKay published “Joy in the Woods” in Eastman’s magazine The Workers Dreadnought under the pseudonym Hugh Hope (You Hope). A year later, McKay returned to New York.

Over the next decade, McKay, certain that Communism was the solution to racism in America, spearheaded numerous social and political organizations designed to promote not only Black empowerment against the immorality of Jim Crow racism but workers’ rights as well. During this time, McKay published several well-received novels, most notably Home to Harlem (1928), the story of a Black veteran returning to Harlem after World War One, and his now-iconic autobiography A Long Way from Home (1937).

At the height of World War Two, McKay, although a longtime atheist, converted to Catholicism as much because of its advocacy of economic reforms for the downtrodden as for its rejection of violence and war. In 1946, McKay moved to Chicago’s South Side drawn by that city’s emerging Black Renaissance Movement. He would die there just two years later. He was only 58. At his request, McKay was buried in the spacious Calvary Cemetery in Queens under a white marble tablet with the inscription “Peace, O My Rebel Heart,” taken from McKay’s own sonnet “The Tired Worker,” which valorizes the dignity of the long-suffering working class.

Poem Text

There is joy in the woods just now, 

      The leaves are whispers of song, 

And the birds make mirth on the bough 

      And music the whole day long,  

And God! to dwell in the town 

      In these springlike summer days,

On my brow an unfading frown

      And hate in my heart always—

A machine out of gear, aye, tired,

Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired.

Just forced to go on through fear, 

      For every day I must eat 

And find ugly clothes to wear,  

      And bad shoes to hurt my feet  

And a shelter for work-drugged sleep! 

      A mere drudge! but what can one do? 

A man that’s a man cannot weep! 

      Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no!

But a slave should never grow tired, 

Whom the masters have kindly hired.

But oh! for the woods, the flowers  

      Of natural, sweet perfume,  

The heartening, summer showers  

      And the smiling shrubs in bloom, 

Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn, 

      The fresh and life-giving air, 

The billowing waves of corn 

      And the birds’ notes rich and clear—

For a man-machine toil-tired

May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.

McKay, Claude. “Joy in the Woods.” 1920. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens with a celebration of idyllic woods untouched by humanity’s mercenary greed and its hunger to exploit people for profit: “There is joy in the woods” (Line 1), the speaker understands. The wind shivers the “whispers of a song” (Line 2) through the trees; birds sing happily in the boughs setting the woods to “music the whole day long” (Line 4). But the second half of the opening stanza returns the poem to the gray-drudgery of the city, where to dwell in these “springlike summer days” (Line 6) is a cruel irony. The speaker wears an “unfading” frown (Line 7). Hate for his work is always in his heart.

The couplet mentions a “machine out of gear” (Line 9), indicating the speaker’s job has reduced him to a cog in a vast and indifferent machine. But he has to go on, there are bills to pay, food to be secured, “ugly clothes” (Line 13) and “bad shoes” (Line 14) to buy. He is, he admits in a moment of ruthless honesty, not a man but a “mere drudge” (Line 15), unable to indulge the tears of self-pity and unwilling to do the seemingly logical thing: suicide. He calls himself a “slave” (Line 19) who is expected to be grateful to the machinery of his own exploitation.

The third full stanza returns to the speaker’s idyllic memory (or perhaps his private fantasy) of nature. It is a near-perfect world, “dust-free” and “dew-tinted” (Line 25), its air not only fresh but “life-giving” (Line 26). The poem ends with the speaker craving the lost world of nature because, as he admits, he has been “hired” (Line 30), a reality that makes him less a man and more a “man-machine” (Line 29).