To One Coming North

“If We Must Die“ by Claude McKay (1919)

In this poem, McKay uses the traditional sonnet form to express resistance against racism and tyranny. Although the poem is rhymed and metered, it departs dramatically from the expectations of the sonnet form in tone and imagery. Unlike the gentler and more evocative “To the One Coming North,” this poem is direct and urgent, rallying people to die nobly in battle rather than slowly by oppression.

“One Way Ticket” by Langston Hughes (1949)

Published almost three decades after “To the One Coming North,” Hughes’s unrhymed poem tackles the theme of migration in a straightforward, manifesto-like manner. The subject of “One Way Ticket” demonstrates that the Great Migration had intensified by the middle of the twentieth century, with most Southern Black families choosing to go anywhere that is “not South.” The rejection of the South – which in both poems symbolizes racial discrimination – is more emphatic in “One Way Ticket”; unlike McKay, Hughes does not deal with nostalgia or the call of home. Like its title, the impetus of the poem is forward-facing.

“American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin (“Probably twilight makes blackness dangerous”)“ by Terrence Hayes (2017)

Like McKay in “To One Coming North” Hayes uses a traditional form to explore the experience of Black people. Hayes’s sonnet is sharp, incisive, and bleakly funny, eschewing the formal language of McKay’s poem, and yet it conforms to the constraints of the traditional form. The poems are similar in their use of rich figurative language.