Gwendolyn+Brooks

Aliyah Smith

**Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks**
(1917-2000)

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas to Keziah and David Brooks. Soon after she was born, her family moved to Chicago, where her two of her siblings were born. When Gwendolyn was seven years old, her mother discovered her gift for writing and exposed her to different types of literature. When she was at home she spent most of her time reading and writing poetry and stories. After high school she attended Wilson Junior College, where she graduated in the class of 1936. Soon after, she was married to Henry Blakely in 1939 and had two children together. Some of her early work appeared in the Chicago Defender (a newspaper primarily for the black community of Chicago). In 1945 her first book, A Street In Bronzeville, was published. In 1949, Annie Allen was published and it received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to receive this award in poetry. In 1968 Gwendolyn Brooks was named poet laureate for the state of Illinois and in 1976 she was the first African American to receive an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Overall, Gwendolyn Brooks received over fifty doctorates from many colleges and universities, two Guggenheim Fellowships and served as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress. Sadly, she died on December 3, 2000 at the age of 83. As you can see, Gwendolyn Brooks is a very honorable poet, and her work is greatly appreciated. **Some of her work...**    **The Crazy Woman**   I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay. I'll wait until November And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November That is the time for me. I'll go out in the frosty dark And sing most terribly.

And all the little people Will stare at me and say, "That is the Crazy Woman Who would not sing in May."      **A Sunset of the City**   Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. 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 summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone. The sweet flowers indrying and dying down, The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

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.

I am cold in this cold house this house Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls. I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs. I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my Desert and my dear relief 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.