"Harlem Dancer" is a poem written by Claude McKay. The scene of the piece is a bar/club. The poem is about a young girl being a prostitute and the way the crowd views her. In the poem, the author, Claude McKay uses literary devices to further his point to the reader. McKay describes a dancer with stylistic elements. His description of the prostitute shows the reader that she had the elegance and grace of a dancer. The words McKay uses highlights the distance the dancer feels when she’s dancing. With the use of imagery and metaphors, the reader is able to grasp the elegance of the dancer. Claude McKay uses a lot of imagery in this poem to describe the dancer and her surroundings. When McKay says “applauding youths”, the reader automatically thinks of good young adults watching the show but later when she says “Laughed with young prostitutes”, the image in your head erases and you start to think of different things when the word “prostitutes” is said. The woman is clearing entertaining the crowd just to make ends meet because the poet states that she does not enjoy this job she is doing with a fake smile.The author in the first couple of lines lays the scene out of a nightclub with youths in a scene with prostitutes. You can tell this when McKay says “Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes." The disrespectful crowd treating her like cheap entertainment with no morals at all was what Claude depicts in the beginning. This sets the type of image on the dancer and her surroundings. It took me a while to catch some of the little imagery details that McKay adds in the poem. Within the speakeasies, the young take in her “perfect” body and see the embodiment of success. She is carefree, like a “picnic day,” but also refined and “luxuriant,” evoking a sense of achievement. McKay makes this poem unique. When McKay uses the word “devoured” in the sentence ”Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze�