Gwendolyn Brooks
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Gwendolyn Brooks (7 June 1917 - 3 December 2000) American poet. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her book of poems Annie Allen.
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- It is brave to be involved
To be not fearful to be unresolved.- "do not be afraid of no", Annie Allen (1949)
- We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.- "We ReaI CooI" , The Bean Eaters (1960)
- The "We"—you're supposed to stop after the "We" and think about their validity, and of course there's no way for you to tell whether it should be said softly or not, I suppose, but I say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty, which they don't bother to question every day, of course. ~ "An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks", Contemporary Literature 11:1 (Winter 1970)
- The WEs in "We Real Cool" are tiny, wispy, weakly argumentative "Kilroy-is-here" announcements. The boys have no accented sense of themselves, yet they are aware of a semi-defined personal importance. Say the "We" softly. ~ Report from Part One (1972)
- When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
- "An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks", Contemporary Literature 11:1 (Winter 1970)
- A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.
- Report From Part One (1972)
- As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
- Report From Part One (1972)
- Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
- Black Poetry Writing (1975)
- Be careful what you swallow. Chew!
- Advice to graduates, Buena Vista University Graduation (1995)
- I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
- My Soul Looks Back, 'Less I Forget (1995) by Dorothy Winbush Riley
- Our earth is round, and, among other things
That means that you and I can hold completely different
Points of view and both be right.
The difference of our positions will show
Stars in your window I cannot even imagine.
Your sky may burn with light,
While mine, at the same moment,
Spreads beautiful to darkness.- "Corners on the Curving Sky"
- Once chosen, our cornering will determine
The message of any star and darkness we
encounter.- "Corners on the Curving Sky"
- To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.- "To Be In Love"
- He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is
overmuch.
Too much too bear.- "To Be In Love"
- I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.- "The Crazy Woman"
- And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."- "The Crazy Woman"
- I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.- "my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell"
- Already you're on Page 8.
- "Thinking of Elizabeth Steinberg"
- consider the big fists breaking your little bones,
or consider the vague bureaucrats
stumbling, fumbling through Paper.- "Thinking of Elizabeth Steinberg"
- Is earnest enough, may earnest attract or lead to light;
Is light enough, if hands in clumsy frenzy, flimsy whimsically, enlist;
Is light enough when this bewilderment crying against the dark shuts down the shades?
Dilute confusion. Find and explode our mist.- "garbageman: the man with the orderly mind"
- Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.- Speech to the Young : Speech to the Progress-Toward
- Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
- "Song for Winnie"
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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
- Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.
- Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.
- The first night, a rock, big as two fists.
The second, a rock big as three.
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.
(Though oaken as man could be.)
The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.
- He ran like a mad thing into the night
And the words in his mouth were stinking.
By the time he had hurt his first white man
He was no longer thinking.
By the time he had hurt his fourth white man
Rudolph Reed was dead.
His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.
"Nigger—" his neighbors said.
- Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.
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The Good Man
- The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.
- Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.
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A Sunset of the City
- Already I am no longer looked at.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.
- It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.
- It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.
- Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.
- Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke. peee
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the mother
- Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
- I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
- What shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
- Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
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Attributed
- Art hurts. Art urges voyages— and it is easier to stay at home.
- As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
- Each body has its art...
- Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
- Poetry is life distilled.
- Reading is important— read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.
- We are each other's magnitude and bond.
- When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
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External links
- Brooks at Modern American Poetry
- Brooks at The Academy of American Poets
- Some poems by Brooks at the Circle Brotherhood Association
- Tribute at VOA News
