Yes, before you all read this and judge me, I realize that the two are different in many ways. But these two both play one of the most important roles in American society. They both criticize the norm, which encourages others to help them change the norm and bring it closer to the ideal norm. I'm not here to argue that Claude Mckay is criticizing America, anyone who can speak English can see that for themselves. However, I can argue that a very important role of poetry is to challenge. Just as Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" criticized the normal love poem or Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" criticized the general attitude of black youth toward school, poets who choose to write these sorts of poems have an important job: inducing change in society.
One thing that I noticed in many (note: many, not all) critical poems is that they contain a certain degree of love for the very thing they seek to criticize. After all, if their poems were all criticism, people would be tempted to leave ideas as obsolete (which is occasionally the goal of the poet) , but instilling some love into their poems tells readers that there is hope for whatever they're criticizing.
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