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• The following version of this poem was used to create this Lesson Plan: McKay, Claude. "Harlem Shadows." Poetry Foundation. Web.

• The poem is 18 lines of iambic pentameter grouped into three six-line stanzas (two sexains and a sestet).

• The second and fourth lines of each stanza are indented, while the other lines are flush to the margin.

• The stanzas are rhymed ABABCC, DEDECC, FGFGCC.

• The poem's form is an adaptation of the traditional sonnet form.

• The speaker, often assumed to be McKay himself, is an unknown Black adult.

• The first stanza places the speaker in "Negro Harlem," where he uses the first person to describe a scene (line 2).

• It is nighttime, and he hears the "halting footsteps" of a young woman.

• Night is personified as having deliberately pulled down an obscuring veil over this scene.

• Young, Black, female sex workers are moving from car...

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This section contains 622 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample