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
love-is hands wells
To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.
moments learning-to-love
She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
love inspirational wedding
We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.
love sweet men
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.
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.
running mean thinking
I don't want people running around saying Gwen Brooks's work is intellectual. That makes people think instantly about obscurity. It shouldn't have to mean that, but it often seems to.
live-in-the-moment lasts defense
My last defense / Is the present tense.