Gwendolyn Brooks
Hardcover | Pages: 200 pages Rating: 4.31 | 441 Users | 60 Reviews
Describe Books As The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
| Original Title: | The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks |
| ISBN: | 1931082871 (ISBN13: 9781931082877) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Explanation Concering Books The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
"If you wanted a poem," wrote Gwendolyn Brooks, "you only had to look out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing." From the life of Chicago's South Side she made a forceful and passionate poetry that fused Modernist aesthetics with African-American cultural tradition, a poetry that registered the life of the streets and the upheavals of the 20th century. Starting with A Street in Bronzeville (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts."Her formal range," writes editor Elizabeth Alexander, "is most impressive, as she experiments with sonnets, ballads, spirituals, blues, full and off-rhymes. She is nothing short of a technical virtuoso." That technical virtuosity was matched by a restless curiosity about the life around her in all its explosive variety. By turns compassionate, angry, satiric, and psychologically penetrating, Gwendolyn Brooks's poetry retains its power to move and surprise.
List Appertaining To Books The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
| Title | : | The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks |
| Author | : | Gwendolyn Brooks |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 200 pages |
| Published | : | November 17th 2005 by Library of America |
| Categories | : | Poetry. Cultural. African American. Feminism |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
Ratings: 4.31 From 441 Users | 60 ReviewsPiece Appertaining To Books The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks
When my father died two years ago, I, who have written since I was seven, had no words. EE Cummings and Gwendolyn Brooks stepped in, and provided me with the two poems I used to eulogize him. Today is my dad's birthday, and, instead of crying all day, I thought I'd spend my energy on promoting Ms. Brooks's poetry. Maybe she'll find a new reader today.In Honor of My FatherA dryness is upon the houseMy father loved and tended.Beyond his firm and sculptured doorHis light and lease have ended.HeI think I was 12 when I first read Brooks' " We real cool" poem, and I thirsted for more. She is a woman associated with a specific time period, but her work is timeless.
I have been working through this collection for a while. Brooks is clearly brilliant, and writes with a fierce rhythm that I love. Unfortunately, most of these poems didnt resonate with me. Many of her allusions went right over my head. I think to appreciate her poetry I would need help: a class; a discussion; explanation. I have no doubt this would uncover a wealth of insight. I will have to wait for it until then.For now, I enjoyed The Bean Eaters and The Anniad, and I adored A Song in the
She is the real thing.
Didn't finish -perhaps because National Poetry Month was over and I no longer "carried the flag?"
As a whole, these poems are a fine demonstration of the tension between conversational style and poetic sensibility - that is, they read like ordinary dialogue, except that nobody would actually say in conversation what is said in the poems (for instance, people don't normally speak in imagery). This gives them a lively potency. On the other hand, rhyming is used very often. While this is not necessarily bad, some of the rhymes clang like a telephone during dinner. Additionally, the tendency to
Gwendolyn Brooks takes the reader to the Southside and Mississippi and Little Rock and makes all the necessary introductions. You know what her people don't want you to know, and more than they think she knows. One of the 20th Century's greatest poets.
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