The next poet to spotlight, another one
of my all-time favorites, is the incomparable Ms. Gwendolyn
Elizabeth Brooks (1979-2000)!
Ms.
Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, though she spent most of her life on
Chicago’s south side, whose Bronzeville neighborhood she memorialized in her
poetry.
She
was interested in poetry from an early age, and published her first poem in
American Childhood Magazine at 13. Starting in 1934, she joined the Chicago Defender, an African-American
newspaper, and published nearly 100 poems in a weekly poetry column.
Ms.
Brooks received the Pulitzer Prize —
the first African American so honored — for her second book of poems, “Annie Allen,” in 1950. Moreover, at age
68, she became the first black woman
appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library
of Congress. Later she served as
Poet Laureate of Illinois, personally funding literary award ceremonies and
visiting grade schools, colleges, universities, prisons, hospitals, and drug
rehabilitation centers.
Ms.
Brooks received many poetry awards and honors, and actively brought poetry
classes and contests to young people in the inner city, as she was so devoted
to encouraging young people to write.
Below
is one of her most loved, as well as well-known, poems, “A Song in the Front Yard:”
I've stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where
it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
The have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it's fine
How they don't have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George'll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it's fine Honest, I do
And I'd like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stocking of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
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