Poetry Magazine

 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

USA 

by Andrena Zawinski
Features Editor, PoetryMagazine.com

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas and died at 83  in Chicago, Illinois of a recently diagnosed cancer. She died in her home surrounded by people she loved, according to the "Chicago Tribune."  "Tribune" reporters Donato and Janega noted Brooks as: 

a prolific writer of hundreds of individual poems, 
essays and reviews, as well as more than 20 books, 
one unpublished.  Her poetry gave elegant voice to 
the plight of everyday African-Americans, telling 
their ordinary tales through formal verses such as 
the sonnet and  ballad--unexpected venues for black 
poets when she began her writing career," quoting 
B.J. Bolden, associate professor of English and 
director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago 
State University.  

The death notice went on to say that "for hours Sunday, a handful of family members and friends had been gathering at Brooks' bedside to read to her although she no longer communicated with those present; and just before the poet took her last breath, her daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely, placed a pen in her hand." 

Gwendolyn Brook's first poetry appeared as young as thirteen in  "American Childhood."  The African-American "Chicago Defender"  published her work regularly by the time she was seventeen. Brooks'  real recognition began to roll in after winning an award at the Midwestern  Writers' Conference (1943) and three more from them in the next two years.  "Mademoiselle" listed her as one of its Ten Young Women  of the Year when A Street in Bronzeville, her first book, appeared in  1945. This was quickly followed by an award form American Academy of Arts  and Letters as well as a Guggenheim. Her second book, Annie Allen, won the  Pulitzer Prize in 1949. Brooks, the first African-American to take the  Pulitzer, came on the scene as a serious poet by the time she was only  thirty.  And her honors didn't stop there. She appeared at the John Kennedy Library of Congress Poetry Festival and the Carter White House.  She followed Carl Sandburg as the Poet Laureate of Illinois, plus the  National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her their Lifetime  Achievement Award.

Scholars commonly divide Brooks' poetry into two phases, the earlier one  in which many of the poems appealed to the mainstream and the later one in which her work became a poetry of protest. Bean Eaters (1960) contained  poems of overt social protest, but  Mecca (1968) was probably the first  collection that did not consider a white audience. Blacks (1987) combines  earlier and later works. Brooks carries to the page a racial consciousness  that seemed to emerge from both the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts  movement in Chicago.

Gwendolyn Brooks has said of her work that she sees her creativity  evolving in three distinct stages: one a statement of condition, the next  of integration, the final as an assertive and  positive individualism  governed by the contention held by some Black poets in the late  sixties--"black poetry is poetry written by blacks, about blacks, and to  blacks and is immediately interesting and accessible to all manner of  blacks, not just college students," Brooks said in an interview in "The  Artful Dodge,"  and that "this type of poetry will be songlike," which is what for her what it  became.

Like many contemporary poets, Gwendolyn Brooks was a teacher;  but her teaching moved beyond the university corridors at Columbia,  Northeastern, Elmhurst, Clay, University of Wisconsin, or her professor of English post at Chicago State. It moved out into the hallways of  elementary schools, and perhaps her most valued award was the dedication of Gwendolyn Brooks Jr. High School in Harvey, Illinois. 

 

Her ballads, sonnets, blues poems, and  free verse experiment with  lyric, narration, drama. Brooks could turn everyday characters into poems  and confront racial identity frankly with the admiration or the anger she embraced in them. "We Real Cool" has probably been tacked up to every  English teacher's bulletin board at one time or another, "Ballad of Rudolph Reed" sings with her voice, "Bean Eaters" remains a signature piece for her characterizations, and "To the Diaspora" addresses blacks 
rather than remaining a poem about blacks.

 
WE REAL COOL
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

       We real cool. We
       Left school. We
       Lurk late. We
       Strike straight. We
       Sing sin. We
       Thin gin. We
       Jazz June. We
       Die soon.
 

TO THE DIASPORA

you did not know you were Afrika

When you set out for Afrika
you did not know you were going.
Because
you did not know you were Afrika.
You did not know the Black continent
that had to be reached
was you.

I could not have told you then that some sun
would come,
somewhere over the road,
would come evoking the diamonds
of you, the Black continent--
somewhere over the road.
You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close
to the heat and youth of the road,
liking my loyalty, liking belief,
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me.

Here is some sun. Some.
Now off into the places rough to reach.
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble,
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done.


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.

"I am not hungry for berries.
I am not hungry for bread.
But hungry hungry for a house
Where at night a man in bed

"May never hear the plaster
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.

"Where never wife and children need
Go blinking through the gloom.
Where every room of many rooms
Will be full of room.

"Oh my home may have its east or west
Or north or south behind it.
All I know is I shall know it,
And fight for it when I find it."

The agent's steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!

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.

A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye
That squeezed into a slit.
But the Rudolph Reeds and children three
Were too joyous to notice it.

For they were not firm in a home of their own
With windows everywhere
And a beautiful banistered stair
And a front yard for flowers and a back for grass?

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.

Then up did rise our Rudolph Reed
And pressed the hand of his wife,
And went to the door with a thirty-four
And a beastly butcher knife.

He ran like mad a 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.

 

THE BEAN EATERS

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair,
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering...
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room
that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and
cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

 

TO THE DIASPORA

you did not know you were Afrika

When you set out for Afrika
you did not know you were going.
Because
you did not know you were Afrika.
You did not know the Black continent
that had to be reached
was you.

I could not have told you then that some sun
would come,
somewhere over the road,
would come evoking the diamonds
of you, the Black continent--
somewhere over the road.
You would not have believed my mouth.

When I told you, meeting you somewhere close
to the heat and youth of the road,
liking my loyalty, liking belief,
you smiled and you thanked me but very little believed me.

Here is some sun. Some.
Now off into the places rough to reach.
Though dry, though drowsy, all unwillingly a-wobble,
into the dissonant and dangerous crescendo.
Your work, that was done, to be done to be done to be done.

Highly recommended:  
Marilyn Hacker's review of Brooks's "The Rites For Cousin VIT" and 
Heather McHugh's commentary on "sonnet-ballad" that Brooks mastered 
appear at http://www.forpoetry.com  - a site produced by Jacqueline
Marcus, whose own poetry is scheduled as an upcoming Feature at 
PoetryMagazine.com

These poems and other popular pieces by Gwendolyn Brooks appear at: 
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/brooks/brooks.htm l

Further information on Brooks and other African-American Poets 
appears at 
: http://www.mtsu.edu/~vvesper/afampoet.htm 

For an interview of Gwendolyn Brooks in which she discusses her phases
of writing see: http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/brooks.html 

For a list of in and out of print books by Gwendolyn Brooks see 

http://www.amazon.com

 

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