Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brookswas an American poet and teacher. She was the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, for her second collection, Annie Allen...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 June 1917
CityTopeka, KS
CountryUnited States of America
this-life
What, what am I to do with all of this life?
life scent
Life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.
facts goodness facts-of-life
Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.
life poetry poetry-is
Poetry is life distilled.
life gold littles
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical guise.
life noise blooming
This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
happening
Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?
color two white
When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.
men giving waiting
No man can give me any word but Wait ...
sweet flower independent
The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the '60s: Independent fire!
mean may speech
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.
weed track magic
There are no magics or elves / Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must / Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
grief fuel fool
beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.
grief mind all-time
I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.