1Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
2And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
3Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
4Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
5She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
6The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
7To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
8Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
9Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
10Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
11The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
12Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
13But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
14I knew her self was not in that strange place.
"The Harlem Dancer" is a sonnet by the Jamaican-American poet Claude McKay. The poem offers a tender portrait of a nightclub dancer, describing the contrast between her distracted inner thoughts and her sensual presence in the club. In doing so, the speaker highlights the tension between people's inner and outer selves, and also grants the dancer the dignity, empathy, and humanity that society would typically deny her. Though first published in 1917, the poem was reprinted in 1922 in McKay's Harlem Shadows and James Weldon Johnson's anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry. Both books were milestones of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and artistic movement in which McKay was a central figure.
The speaker describes an audience filled with young people and young sex workers who laughed and clapped while watching the scantily dressed woman move her perfect body smoothly to the music. Her voice sounded like flutes being played by a band of Black musicians at a picnic. The dancer sang and danced with elegance as the thin fabric of her clothing gently draped across her body. The speaker compares the dancer to a palm tree confidently moving back and forth in the wind, and which only becomes more beautiful for withstanding bad weather. The dancer's glossy, black curls fell beautifully on her dark-skinned neck. The young men in the audience, red-faced and uninhibited from drinking wine, showed their appreciation for the dancer by throwing money at her. Both these men and the young women in the audience had their eyes glued to the dancer, seeming to consume her body with their hungry, intense stares. The speaker, however, saw that the dancer's smile wasn't real, and understood that her true, inner self wasn't really present in that strange nightclub at all.
“The Harlem Dancer” presents a brief, vivid portrait of an exotic dancer in what's implied to be a nightclub. The poem contrasts the dancer’s beauty and grace with her internal sense of detachment and unhappiness, suggesting that appearances don't always reflect people's true selves. The audience’s perception of the dancer as an alluring physical presence who delights in entertaining them conflicts with her reality, and through this contrast the poem implies a stark difference between people’s inner and outer lives—between who they are, and who they may present themselves to be.
The poem begins by presenting the dancer through the eyes of young audience members who relish her physical appearance and sensual beauty. They delight in her “perfect, half-clothed body” and watch her with an “eager, passionate gaze.”
The speaker, meanwhile, offers rich descriptions of the dancer that emphasize her grace, courage, and dignified beauty. Even so, the speaker still focuses on the dancer's appearance, and absent from all these observations is the perspective of the dancer herself. Everything the poem says about the dancer is based on the way the audience perceives her.
The poem makes it clear that this perception doesn’t line up with the dancer’s actual feelings. In its last two lines, the speaker describes the dancer’s face as “falsely-smiling” and says that “her self was not in that strange place.” In other words, the dancer’s true self isn’t really there in the nightclub; her mind is far away. Her performance, then, is just that: a performance. The tension between the dancer’s two selves adds a sense of poignancy to the poem. Knowing that the dancer isn’t actually enjoying herself all that much casts the entire scene in a new light, suggesting that the joyful atmosphere exists only in the audience’s mind.
Of course, even the assertion that the dancer is not really “in that strange place” depends on the speaker’s perspective alone. Readers never get to hear from the dancer herself, and thus, following the poem’s own logic, never really get to know what she’s thinking. Even apparently neutral, descriptive statements (such as, “She sang and danced on gracefully and calm”) express only the speaker’s personal judgment of the dancer. She may look graceful and calm to the speaker, but her internal detachment and implied unhappiness suggest a strikingly different inner reality.
To that end, maybe the other audience members aren't all that happy to be there either; perhaps their own minds are elsewhere, or their rowdy behavior is covering up inner turmoil. In any case, the poem speaks to the often stark contrast between the way things look and the way things are, as well as the limits of perception when it comes to knowing someone else’s inner world.
The speaker describes the dancer with nuance and sensitivity, portraying her art as beautiful, elegant, and expressive. In so doing, the speaker elevates the dancer’s body and profession, giving her the respect the rest of the audience (and, implicitly, society at large) denies her.
“The Harlem Dancer” was written in the early 20th century, a time of especially restrictive social and racial norms, and it takes place in Harlem, a historically Black neighborhood of New York City. Considering this context, the poem’s sympathy for someone on the edges of society—a Black woman dancing for tips in a seedy nightclub—powerfully insists on treating people like the dancer with empathy and respect.
The audience members see the dancer as an alluring, sensual object whose purpose is to entertain them in exchange for money. To the “applauding youths” and “young prostitutes” of the audience, the dancer is a “perfect, half-clothed body” and a “shape” to be “[d]evoured,” but nothing more. By “tossing coins in praise” and visually devouring her, the onlookers reduce the dancer to an object to be bought and consumed, denying her any sense of human agency.
The audience’s rowdy, sensual, almost predatory vision of the dancer contrasts with the speaker’s treatment of the dancer as an emblem of grace and dignity. The speaker, like the rest of the audience, appreciates the dancer’s physical beauty, but he describes that beauty with reverence and respect rather than callousness.
The comparisons of the dancer’s voice and body to “the sound of blended flutes” and “a proudly-swaying palm” express the tender humanity the speaker feels toward her. The speaker’s final assertion that the dancer is “falsely-smiling” and detached from her surroundings recognizes that the dancer is a real person with her own feelings and dreams, not just a beautiful object of desire and source of pleasure for the audience.
The speaker's tender portrayal of the dancer also comments more broadly on the injustice of a society that dehumanizes and devalues large groups of people like the dancer: Black people, women, entertainers, and others who are marginalized, exploited, or ignored. It's also worth noting that at the time the poem was written, Harlem was a poorer, mostly Black neighborhood, and the dancer may be performing in the nightclub out of basic economic necessity. Likewise, the young audience members (at least some of whom are likely Black too) may simply be seeking some small amount of entertainment, comfort, or distraction from the difficulties of their own day-to-day lives.
The poem thus shines a light on social, racial, and economic injustice while also celebrating the beauty that manages to endure. In this way, "The Harlem Dancer" is a classic early example of the kind of examination of Black reality and celebration of Black beauty that defined the Harlem Renaissance.
Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
The poem's title tells readers that it takes place in Harlem, a historically Black neighborhood of New York City, and that it's about a dancer. The poem's first line then dives right into the action, creating the impression of a scene that has been going on for some time.
The "dancer" of the title is apparently an exotic one, given the references to her lack of clothing and the raucous atmosphere around her. The mention of rowdy young people laughing and clapping suggests that this is all happening in a nightclub, while the mention of "young prostitutes" highlights the seediness of this club (remember that this poem was written around the 1920s, when social mores were even stricter than they are nowadays).
Already, though, the poem suggests that not all is as it appears to be. The fact that these "prostitutes" are "young," for example, suggests their innocence. The fact that the other audience members are "youths" does the same, perhaps implying that young people are forced to grow up quickly in Harlem.
The sounds of the poem evoke its lively atmosphere. The first line's meter, for instance, is not the typical iambic pentameter of an English sonnet (five iambs, or da-DUMs, in a row)—at least, not exactly. The first two feet are indeed iambs, but then the stressed and unstressed syllables get jumbled around a bit:
Applaud- | ing youths | laughed with | young prost- | itutes
This jumpy metrical variation emphasizes the rowdiness of the audience members, but it's not just meter that helps the first line create such a powerful atmosphere:
Also note how the poem opens by focusing on the audience, rather than the dancer herself. And when the dancer enters the poem in line 2, the audience focuses solely on the dancer's alluring physical body—her outward appearance, which is both "perfect" and "half-clothed." This time, the line follows iambic pentameter much more closely, with some extra stressed beats simply drawing attention to the dancer's body. The line is also divided exactly in the middle by the comma after "perfect," which creates a caesura:
And watched her perfect, || half-clothed body sway;
These structural aspects of the line reflect the dancer's body: the way it is "half-clothed" (the line is divided into neat halves) and its swaying (the iambs "sway" between unstressed and stressed syllables, and the evenly divided line itself seems to sway):
While the dancer's body may, in fact, be both very beautiful and "half-clothed," it's notable that the poetic techniques of the line emphasize the way the dancer is seen by the audience rather than the way she sees herself. By enacting the audience's image of the dancer as a "perfect, half-clothed body," the line emphasizes the way the audience is objectifying the dancer—and, implicitly, begins to offer a critique of that objectification.
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
Unlock all 357 words of this analysis of Lines 3-4 of “The Harlem Dancer,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Get LitCharts A+She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell;
and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.
The palm tree in the poem symbolizes grace, dignity, and resilience. Palms are tall, elegant trees that often grow in beautiful tropical places where they must withstand frequent, heavy storms. By metaphorically comparing the dancer to a palm tree, the speaker removes the dancer from the poem's shady and undistinguished nightclub setting and transforms her into emblem of pride, perseverance, and dignity. She's not just like a palm tree in that she gracefully sways to the music much like a palm sways in the wind, but also because she has stood tall in the face of stormy challenges. In fact, she has become "lovelier" in overcoming such challenges; her strength is part of what makes her so beautiful.
On a broader level, the palm tree may also symbolize the way Black people have triumphed over the significant oppression and exploitation they have faced throughout history, especially in the United States. In this way, the poem becomes a moving testament to the dignity, beauty, and resilience of Black people like the Harlem dancer.
"The Harlem Dancer" contains quite a few instances of assonance, which is often used to create connections between words or to emphasize a point. For example, in line 1, the assonance between "youths" and "prostitutes" joins those two groups of people into a single, collective, rowdy audience (and audience that the speaker feels distinctly separated from).
Later, in lines 4 and 5, the musical repetition of the long /ay/ sound in "players," "day," and "sang" evokes the "sound of blended flutes" to which the speaker compares the dancer's voice. That is, the increased music in the poem's language here reflects the music that language describes. To that end, assonance, along with ample alliteration and consonance, simply adds lyricism and musicality to the poem as a whole.
All three of these devices also draw readers' attention to those words that share sounds. That attention might be rousing, as in the clean /ee/ sounds of "To me she seemed," which make the speaker's metaphor seem more emphatic and heartfelt. In lines 11 and 12, assonance contributes to the feeling of building menace as the boys and girls metaphorically devour the dancer. And in the final line, the long /ay/ sounds of "strange place" cause the words to linger, perhaps prompting readers to reflection on how and why the nightclub got to be so strange.
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
To move smoothly back and forth or in different directions. The word emphasizes the elegance and beauty of the dancer's physical movements.
"The Harlem Dancer" is an English sonnet (also called a Shakespearean sonnet). English sonnets like this one consist of a single, 14-line stanza that can be broken up into three quatrains and a final two-line couplet:
Like many other English sonnets, "The Harlem Dancer" includes a "turn" or "volta" after line 12. Whereas the first three quatrains set the scene and introduce an elaborate metaphor comparing the dancer to a "proudly-swaying palm," the final couplet responds to and complicates everything that's come before it. The poem's final two lines reveal that the dancer's true self is not in the nightclub, and cast the 12 previous lines in a starkly new light.
Among Harlem Renaissance writers, Claude McKay was well-known for using traditionally European forms, especially the sonnet, to depict aspects of Black life that had been neglected by European and white American writers. "The Harlem Dancer" is just one of many poems in which he uses a form often associated with love poetry (again, Shakespeare's sonnets are a famous example) to bestow beauty, close attention, and humanity on Black subjects who were often denied those things by white society. By putting his own twist on the sonnet and using it to depict Black people with elegance and dignity, McKay insisted that Black life should be the subject of serious poetry and that Black writers deserved a place in the American canon.
"The Harlem Dancer," like most English sonnets, is written in iambic pentameter, a meter in which each line contains five iambs (feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern). Take line 3 as an example:
Her voice | was like | the sound | of blend- | ed flutes
That said, the meter throughout the poem is very loose! McKay frequently adds, eliminates, or alters the usual order of stressed and unstressed syllables in order to emphasize different aspects of the poem's meaning. This more flexible meter is highly expressive, and it allows McKay to embrace the traditions of English poetry while also putting his own spin on them. That rhythmic spin, which also helps his poems accommodate the rhythms of more colloquial speech, is one of the main reasons that McKay was so important to the Harlem Renaissance.
The poem's very first line indicates that the meter will be iambic pentameter, but with a twist:
Applaud- | ing youths | laughed with | young prost- | itutes
The line has 10 syllables, just like a typical line of iambic pentameter. But the usual unstressed–stressed order of those syllables is only consistent for the first two feet; the remaining three feet are a trochee (stressed-unstressed), spondee (stressed-stressed), and either a final iamb or a pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed) depending on the reader. Those unexpected metrical feet shift the stresses of the line, thus placing special emphasis on the youth and laughter of the audience. The forceful, loud sounds of the clustered stresses also make the audience's laughter and applause seem harsh, maybe even sinister, instead of pleasant and friendly.
Of course, there are some lines that follow the standard pattern of iambic pentameter, like lines 7 and 8:
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Some readers might read "Grown" as being stressed, but the meter here is still very steady. The poem's tendency to stretch and play with the meter makes moments of metrical regularity, especially two regular iambic pentameter lines in a row like this, feel particularly important. In this case, the strong unstressed–stressed pattern of these lines supports the speaker's view of the dancer as "a proudly-swaying palm." As the dancer sways back and forth, persevering through the "storm" of her undesirable surroundings, so beat the lines' stresses.
"The Harlem Dancer" follows the typical rhyme scheme of an English (or Shakespearean) sonnet:
ABABCDCDEFEFGG
In other words, the first three quatrains (four-line stanzas) follow an alternating rhyme pattern, while the final two lines rhyme with each other. The rhyme scheme reflects the poem's content: the first three quatrains have the same pattern and all describe external perceptions of the dancer, while the final couplet switches up the rhyme pattern just as the poem delves into the dancer's mind for the first time.
McKay subtly plays with this traditional rhyme scheme as well. The rhyme sounds of the second quatrain (lines 5–8), for example, are closely linked by the consonance of the /m/ sound: "calm"/"palm" and "form"/"storm." The rhymes thus all sound similar, and the closeness of the sounds emphasizes the dancer's calm, smooth motions and her perseverance through adversity.
There is a similar closeness of rhyme sounds between "praise" and "gaze" and the couplet's rhyme words, "face" and "place." Here, the sonic similarity emphasizes how the rowdy audience members do not or cannot see the dancer's inner reality. They "gaze" at her passionately, but they do not see that her happy "face" is a false, performative one. In fact, it is their very "praise"—which is callous, exploitative, and predatory—that contributes to the radical strangeness of the "place" for the dancer and the speaker. McKay's subtle rhyming creates a visceral, poignant sense of the dancer's alienation at the end of the poem.
The speaker of "The Harlem Dancer" is unidentified—given no name, race, gender, nor any other potential marker. While it's definitely possible that the speaker is Claude McKay himself—he lived in Harlem and likely observed scenes that could have inspired the poem—there isn't clear evidence that this is so, and readers don't need to assume the speaker is McKay to understand the poem.
That said, some things are clear about the speaker. This person doesn't identify with the young, rowdy audience members and seems to feel discomfort (or even disgust) with the way they behave toward the dancer. The speaker observes the dancer with a degree of sensitivity that starkly contrasts with the predatory way the rest of the audience "[d]evour[s]" her. The speaker admires the dancer as an emblem of grace and dignified humanity, using simile and metaphor to make lofty statements of her beauty, while the others objectify her as a mere object of entertainment and sensual pleasure.
It's impossible to know with certainty why the speaker feels isolated from the rest of the audience and claims privileged insight into the dancer's inner life. The speaker may be older than the youthful audience, an especially sensitive observer, or even an entertainer (or former entertainer) themselves. The speaker is likely also Black. This is suggested by the repeated attention the poem gives to the dancer's Blackness, which becomes a strong point of connection between the speaker and the dancer.
As the title indicates, the poem is set in Harlem—a traditionally Black neighborhood in New York City and the site of the artistic and cultural revival known as the Harlem Renaissance. More specifically, "The Harlem Dancer" likely takes place in a nightclub around 1917, when the poem was published. At that time, it was typical to find Black entertainers, like the dancer of the poem, performing for money to a youthful crowd. It's also possible that the poem takes place on the street or in an alley—anywhere a group of people might have gathered to drink, mingle, and be entertained.
Importantly, some parts of the poem briefly venture beyond the literal setting of the nightclub. Through metaphor, the speaker imagines a peaceful rest day full of traditional Black music and a swaying palm tree (presumably in a tropical place). These imagined other places anticipate the poem's final lines, in which the speaker concludes that the dancer's true self is not really present in the nightclub. Though her body is there, her inner self is somewhere else, though the poem doesn't or can't say where. In a way, that unknown, longed-for place is also present in the poem, though only as the dancer's inner desire.
Claude McKay first published "The Harlem Dancer" in 1917 in the magazine Seven Arts, along with another sonnet called "Invocation," under the pseudonym Eli Edwards. These were the first poems McKay published in the United States. In 1920, it was reprinted in his volume Spring in New Hampshire. And in 1922, it appeared yet again in McKay's famous collection Harlem Shadows as well as in James Weldon Johnson's anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry—both of which became key texts of the Harlem Renaissance. The publication history of "The Harlem Dancer" reflects the poem's continued relevance to the Harlem Renaissance as the movement grew, from the 1910s into the 1920s, into one of America's most important cultural revolutions.
McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in 1889. His early writings explored his interest in Jamaican dialect, an interest that would later express itself in the colloquialisms of Harlem speech found in "The Harlem Dancer." As a young man, he read and admired European literature, which gave him an affection for traditional forms like the sonnet, but he also developed an interest in Jamaican culture and his African heritage. McKay moved to the U.S. in 1912 and eventually made his way to New York City, where the cultural and artistic revolution known as the Harlem Renaissance was in its very early stages. In the years that followed, he would cast his literary eye on Black American life and make a lasting mark on the movement.
Indeed, McKay is sometimes considered a precursor to the Harlem Renaissance, though most people agree that he was an early participant in and leader of the movement. Poems like "The Harlem Dancer"—with its elevation of Black life to the subject of high art and its critique of social and racial norms—especially influenced the movement's development. The title poem of McKay's 1922 collection, Harlem Shadows, as well as "If We Must Die" from that volume, are other important expressions of the movement's style and aims.
As an early Harlem Renaissance figure, McKay influenced many other writers, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James and Weldon Johnson.
The Harlem Renaissance grew out of several historical factors. The most important of these was the Great Migration of Black Americans from the southern to the northern parts of the United States between 1910 and 1920. Black leaders, especially W. E. B. Du Bois, encouraged Black Americans to leave the South, with its scarce economic opportunities and harsh segregation laws, for the North, which was seen as a land of freedom and opportunity. World War I had also caused a decline in immigration from Europe, which led Northern employers to seek new sources of labor. Harlem became the destination of choice for many migrating Black Americans because of its abundant housing and growing reputation as the center of Black life—not just in New York City but in America as a whole.
With so many Black people moving to Harlem, the neighborhood quickly developed a strong cultural, artistic, and social scene that blossomed into what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. This blossoming embraced musicians (especially jazz musicians), painters, dancers (like the dancer in the poem), and beyond—as well as the writers, like McKay, who recorded the beauty and hardship of early-20th-century Black life on the page.
The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of "The Harlem Dancer."
Electronic Edition of Harlem Shadows — An open-source edition of Harlem Shadows, McKay's groundbreaking 1922 volume in which "The Harlem Dancer" was reprinted. This link includes useful critical commentary, textual history, the original 1917 text, and other resources.
The Harlem Renaissance — A short post about the Harlem Renaissance by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.
McKay's Life and Work — A detailed but brief look at McKay's life and literary career, including information about his publication history and critical reception.
"Black Capital: Harlem in the 1920s" — A digital look at the New York State Museum's exhibition on the rich culture of 1920s Harlem.