Point of View

The speaker of the poem occupies a more complex position within the poem then it would initially seem. On the one hand, the speaker clearly identifies with the women in the poem. He laments the “sacred brown feet of my fallen race!" (16). The speaker finds connection and solidarity with the women based on a shared racial identity. However, it is not necessarily clear that the speaker is from Harlem. Indeed, the speaker refers to the neighborhood as “Negro Harlem” rather than “my neighborhood,” for example. Moreover, the night life of Harlem appears to be a novelty to him, as he describes the “shapes of girls” with curiosity (3).

The speaker’s language further distances him from the people he describes, and is a potential sign of class difference. The speaker describes Harlem in traditional poetic language which at times approximates a Robert Frost poem. For example...