By Shane Hausler Crowther, Linnea. Gwendolyn Brooks. n.d. Legacy Web. 26 Feb. 2012

 Born Topeka, Kansas  Moved to Chicago’s South Side  Economically disadvantaged  Attended integrated and non- integrated schools  Eventide  Met Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson  Chicago Defender

 Henry Blakely  Midwestern Writers Conference Poetry Award (1943)  A Street in Bronzeville  Annie Allen  Wrote of poor urban Blacks  Only one novel: Maud Martha  Later works were often political  “Raw power and roughness”

 Left Harper and Row publishing in favor of smaller independent black publishers  Resistance to poems  Wrote about influential black leaders  2 autobiographical collections  Poetry consultant to Library of Congress  Pulitzer Prize  Known as a bridge from traditional to militant poets  Died in 2000, age 83 MrAfrica. Gwendolyn Brooks. n.d. Afropoets Web. 26 Feb

 POETRY  A Street in Bronzeville (also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  Annie Allen (also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  The Bean Eaters (also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  In the Time of Detachment, In the Time of Cold, Civil War Centennial Commission of Illinois (Springfield, IL),  In the Mecca (also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  For Illinois 1968: A Sesquicentennial Poem, Harper (New York, NY),  Riot (also see below), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Family Pictures (also see below), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Aloneness, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Aurora, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Beckonings, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Primer for Blacks, Black Position Press (Chicago, IL),  To Disembark, Third World Press (Chicago, IL),  Black Love, Brooks Press (Chicago, IL),  Mayor Harold Washington; and, Chicago, the I Will City, Brooks Press (Chicago, IL),  The Near-Johannesburg Boy, and Other Poems, David Co. (Chicago, IL),  Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle, David Co. (Chicago, IL),  Winnie, Third World Press (Chicago, IL),  Children Coming Home, David Co. (Chicago, IL),  In Montgomery, and Other Poems,Third World Press (Chicago, IL),  COLLECTED WORKS  Selected Poems, Harper (New York, NY),  (With others) A Portion of That Field: The Centennial of the Burial of Lincoln, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL),  The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (contains A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maud Martha, The Bean Eaters, and In the Mecca; also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  (Editor) A Broadside Treasury (poems), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  (Editor) Jump Bad: A New Chicago Anthology, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  (With Keorapetse Kgositsile, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Dudley Randall) A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  Young Poet's Primer (writing manual), Brooks Press (Chicago, IL),  Very Young Poets (writing manual), Brooks Press (Chicago, IL),  The Day of the Gwendolyn: A Lecture (sound recording), Library of Congress (Washington, DC),  Blacks (includes A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters, Maud Martha, A Catch of Shy Fish, Riot, In the Mecca, and most of Family Pictures), David Co. (Chicago, IL),  The Gwendolyn Brooks Library, Moonbeam Publications,  OTHER  Maud Martha (novel; also see below), Harper (New York, NY),  Bronzeville Boys and Girls (poems; for children), Harper (New York, NY),  Report from Part One: An Autobiography, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI),  The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves: Or You Are What You Are (for children), Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1974, reissued,  Report from Part Two (autobiography), Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1996.

 Annie Allen (Harper & Row, 1949)  Notes from the Childhood and Girlhood  The Anniad  Named for the Aeneid  The Womanhood  Contains “The Children of the Poor”  (Pg. 410 represents only the 4th of 5)

1 People who have no children can be hard: Attain a mail of ice and insolence: Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense Hesitate in the hurricane to guard. And when wide world is bitten and bewarred They perish purely, waving their spirits hence Without a trace of grace or of offense To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred. While through a throttling dark we others hear The little lifting helplessness, the queer Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous Lost softness softly makes a trap for us. And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of The malocclusions, the inconditions of love. 2 What shall I give my children? Who are poor, Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land, Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand No velvet and no velvety velour; But who have begged me for a brisk contour, Crying that they are quasi, contraband Because unfinished, graven by a hand Less than angelic, admirable or sure. My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device. But I lack access to my proper stone. And plentitude of plan shall not suffice Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone To ratify my little halves who bear Across an autumn freezing everywhere. 3 And shall I prime my children, pray, to pray? Mites, come invade most frugal vestibules Spectered with crusts of penitents’ renewals And all hysterics arrogant for a day. Instruct yourselves here is no devil to pay. Children, confine your lights in jellied rules; Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules; Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray. Behind the scurryings of your neat motif I shall wait, if you wish: revise the psalm If that should frighten you: sew up belief If that should tear: turn, singularly calm At forehead and at fingers rather wise, Holding the bandage ready for your eyes. 4 First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string With feathery sorcery; muzzle the note With hurting love; the music that they wrote Bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing Threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing For the dear instrument to bear. Devote The bow to silks and honey. Be remote A while from malice and from murdering. But first to arms, to armor. Carry hate In front of you and harmony behind. Be deaf to music and to beauty blind. Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late For having first to civilize a space Wherein to play your violin with grace. 5 When my dears die, the festival-colored brightness That is their motion and mild repartee Enchanted, a macabre mockery Charming the rainbow radiance into tightness And into a remarkable politeness That is not kind and does not want to be, May not they in the crisp encounter see Something to recognize and read as rightness? I say they may, so granitely discreet, The little crooked questionings inbound, Concede themselves on most familiar ground, Cold an old predicament of the breath: Adroit, the shapely prefaces complete, Accept the university of death.

 Sonnet 1- The differences between those with children and those without any.  Sonnet 2- How shall I take care of my children?  Sonnet 3- Pray?  Sonnet 4- Fight now so you can play later.  Sonnet 5- Death

 Jackson Williams, Kenny. Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Web. 28 Feb  Catherine, Halley. "Gwendolyn Brooks." Poetry foundation. Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, Web. 28 Feb  Ud Din, Kamal. Mother Utters: Struggle and Subversion in the Works of Gwendolyn Brooks. Indiana:  Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Web. 27 Feb  Crowther, Linnea. Gwendolyn Brooks. n.d. Legacy Web. 26 Feb  MrAfrica. Gwendolyn Brooks. n.d. Afropoets Web. 26 Feb