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Selected Poems
Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more—including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."
By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.
This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage—including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.
By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.
This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage—including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.
161 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1963
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About the author
Gwendolyn Brooks
136 books551 followersGwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Annie Allen and one of the most celebrated Black poets. She also served as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress—the first Black woman to hold that position. She was the poet laureate for the state of Illinois for over thirty years, a National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee, and the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her works include We Are Shining, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, A Street in Bronzeville, In the Mecca, The Bean Eaters, and Maud Martha.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 246 reviews
September 29, 2024
Among all the world’s crazy
Poetry books
There is none like this one
By Gwendolyn Brooks
Till now I thought Wallace
Stevens the best
Of rococo poets for his
Harmonious zest
Or Marianne Moore
And her cockatoo muse
Who sang baseball statistics
To boys who shined shoes
But Brooks is the rococoest
And coolest of them all
Dropping words like bright leaves
That twirl when they fall
And the beat of her lines
And the pulse of her mind
Played the quicksilver song
Of the wild winter wind
An Art Tatum of word-music
Her fingers did fly
On the black keys and the white keys
Of the piano sky
And the jazz of her streets
With its strong kitchen smells
On the sleep of dead babies
Cast lullaby spells
And men gone off to war
And men leaving their wives
And girls dreaming sweet dreams
Of better black lives
And those eating beans and
Those munching on salads
They’re all here in her poems
Which read like good ballads
There she sat at her typewriter
Night after night
Overhearing the neighbours
Make love and fight
And in the pool halls of her heart
Coloured balls clicked
Cigarettes ashed
Time in clocks ticked
July 16, 2018
This is the first book of poetry I've read in years! I really enjoyed it. One of my favourite poems in it was this one :
To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.
To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there_
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.
July 4, 2015
These poems focus on the lives of black people, poor people, elderly people, disabled people, soldiers. They do not shy away from difficult topics but do not sensationalize them, either: one piece, titled "the mother," begins starkly, "Abortions do not let you forget."
Brooks inhabits the characters she writes about with a stirringly absolute empathy. By shining on them the quiet light of her unostentatiously perfect prosody, she shows us that even society's most overlooked and alienated individuals are grounded by an inner framework of dignity, that the insides of even the most downtrodden are lined by a nacreous grace. (Something we should all already know but are all occasionally guilty of forgetting.) Yet, as tender as she sometimes is, Brooks can also be pungently wry, stingingly acerbic, especially when casting her eye on the varied manifestations of racism. Consider, for example, this stanza that she drops in an almost-offhand way into the middle of the long poem "The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith," an Eliot-esque psychological analysis of a young black male character:
But movie-time approaches, time to boo
The hero's kiss, and boo the heroine
Whose ivory and yellow it is sin
For his eye to eat of. The Mickey Mouse,
However, is for everyone in the house.
With its craftsman-like attentiveness to sonic detail, Brooks's language sometimes achieves an intricately filigreed, rococo grandeur that puts one in mind of the master goldsmiths of past centuries:
Vaunting hands are now devoid.
Hieroglyphics of her eyes
Blink upon a paradise
Paralyzed and paranoid. (from "The Anniad")
Yet Brooks's verse is equally powerful when plainspoken, as in "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till" and "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed," two of the effective poems about American racism ever written.
Maestro of every conceivable meter, from the ballad to the sonnet and beyond, Gwendolyn Brooks deserves better than to be labeled "the finest black poet of [her] generation," as Robert F. Kiernan's front-cover blurb labels her: Brooks is one of the finest poets of her generation, even of her century, period.
Brooks inhabits the characters she writes about with a stirringly absolute empathy. By shining on them the quiet light of her unostentatiously perfect prosody, she shows us that even society's most overlooked and alienated individuals are grounded by an inner framework of dignity, that the insides of even the most downtrodden are lined by a nacreous grace. (Something we should all already know but are all occasionally guilty of forgetting.) Yet, as tender as she sometimes is, Brooks can also be pungently wry, stingingly acerbic, especially when casting her eye on the varied manifestations of racism. Consider, for example, this stanza that she drops in an almost-offhand way into the middle of the long poem "The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith," an Eliot-esque psychological analysis of a young black male character:
But movie-time approaches, time to boo
The hero's kiss, and boo the heroine
Whose ivory and yellow it is sin
For his eye to eat of. The Mickey Mouse,
However, is for everyone in the house.
With its craftsman-like attentiveness to sonic detail, Brooks's language sometimes achieves an intricately filigreed, rococo grandeur that puts one in mind of the master goldsmiths of past centuries:
Vaunting hands are now devoid.
Hieroglyphics of her eyes
Blink upon a paradise
Paralyzed and paranoid. (from "The Anniad")
Yet Brooks's verse is equally powerful when plainspoken, as in "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till" and "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed," two of the effective poems about American racism ever written.
Maestro of every conceivable meter, from the ballad to the sonnet and beyond, Gwendolyn Brooks deserves better than to be labeled "the finest black poet of [her] generation," as Robert F. Kiernan's front-cover blurb labels her: Brooks is one of the finest poets of her generation, even of her century, period.
May 3, 2022
Gwendolyn Brooks is a master wordsmith. Writing real life, much like Nina Simone, she was giving it up straight, with a tiny bit of chaser. I love her work and I have had this book for six years, never managing to get all the way through until a few days ago. I didn't always understand it when I was younger. I feel like the older I get the more and more it makes sense... it’s very revealing and shares a lot about the state of everything that she’s witnessed.
April 10, 2020
Their retching rampage among their luminous
Black pudding, among the guttural chained slime
The weary blues of the Middle Passage led to a poet saying, Nah. This is a revolution: a way of saying Enough, all the while parsing out the subsequent syllables of civilization. Madame Brooks just beat down Robert Frost in the street of long form possibility. It was interesting then that she devoted a poem to Frost, they appear to be so dissimilar.
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 weeds grow.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
Black pudding, among the guttural chained slime
The weary blues of the Middle Passage led to a poet saying, Nah. This is a revolution: a way of saying Enough, all the while parsing out the subsequent syllables of civilization. Madame Brooks just beat down Robert Frost in the street of long form possibility. It was interesting then that she devoted a poem to Frost, they appear to be so dissimilar.
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 weeds grow.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
October 24, 2007
I had the honor and privilege of meeting Ms. Brooks at a reading she gave at a local college in 1992. She was the first honest-to-God poet I ever met. She was personable and down-to-Earth and, in her mid-to-late 70's at the time, as sharp as the proverbial knife. And she proceeded to give an hour+ reading which left everybody in that room a true-blue fan of hers.
Brooks' poetry has a delightfully strange quality about it: at once gentle and powerful, simultaneously spare and voluminous. She says more in a few lines than many novelists say in doorstop-thick tomes.
There are breathing characters and multi-level worlds contained in this verse. If "We Real Cool" is the only poem of Brooks' you know, then treat yourself and give this fine overview of her work a try.
Brooks' poetry has a delightfully strange quality about it: at once gentle and powerful, simultaneously spare and voluminous. She says more in a few lines than many novelists say in doorstop-thick tomes.
There are breathing characters and multi-level worlds contained in this verse. If "We Real Cool" is the only poem of Brooks' you know, then treat yourself and give this fine overview of her work a try.
March 14, 2015
4.5 stars! I mean, it's Gwendolyn Motherfucking Brooks.
April 22, 2023
The poet ruminated on various subjects, circling from oblique angles, but always worded in plain language. Her mind was a repository of simple, yet remarkable ideas and insights.
Brooks told us that if we wanted a poem, all we needed to do was to look out the window. Life is poetry, and by that, she did not mean it was all pretty. Rather, she knew that to name one's pain is to gain some agency over it.
Brooks seemed to divide her musings into observations, hints of mischief, excavations, stories, and snapshots. She made assertions and asked us questions which merit further thought:
Is God lonely?
Is it the greatest sin to live a predictable life?
Was Jesus lynched?
Why do "well-meaning" people act like poverty is contagious?
Is racism innate or learned?
Is the red of blood the only color which should instill fear?
Is dignity something you have to claim for yourself?
Why do we expect truth or art to be palatable or pretty?
Potential isn't dormant, but vibrant with energy, like a "tied storm."
Does the heart have ears to hear?
Never apologize for your natural self.
Is a thing with a wounded wing not still beautiful?
Brooks told us that if we wanted a poem, all we needed to do was to look out the window. Life is poetry, and by that, she did not mean it was all pretty. Rather, she knew that to name one's pain is to gain some agency over it.
Brooks seemed to divide her musings into observations, hints of mischief, excavations, stories, and snapshots. She made assertions and asked us questions which merit further thought:
Is God lonely?
Is it the greatest sin to live a predictable life?
Was Jesus lynched?
Why do "well-meaning" people act like poverty is contagious?
Is racism innate or learned?
Is the red of blood the only color which should instill fear?
Is dignity something you have to claim for yourself?
Why do we expect truth or art to be palatable or pretty?
Potential isn't dormant, but vibrant with energy, like a "tied storm."
Does the heart have ears to hear?
Never apologize for your natural self.
Is a thing with a wounded wing not still beautiful?
November 8, 2021
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.
February 1, 2013
Gwendolyn Brooks should have been our Inaugural poet, if Clinton valued literature more, politics less. There's little comparison between her poetry and her sophomoric colleagues'. "We real cool. We" alone stands as a prosodic and vocal breakthrough in American letters, the voice of the street in spondees, with the line-end punctuating the street pause. Wonderful, and enlightening. Nobody knew you could capture the
street in a brief lyric until she did. Rappers would do well to master Brooks' spondees here.
But that's just the beginning of her accomplishment, as this selection shows.
As for inaugural poets, no politician since JFK had the political smarts to appoint an opponent--a lifelong Republican--to the post, perhaps because Frost's fame did not deter from the Office of President. Now no one poet dominates like that, though Billy Collins is close. And Gwendolyn Brooks made up in skill what she lacked in fame.
street in a brief lyric until she did. Rappers would do well to master Brooks' spondees here.
But that's just the beginning of her accomplishment, as this selection shows.
As for inaugural poets, no politician since JFK had the political smarts to appoint an opponent--a lifelong Republican--to the post, perhaps because Frost's fame did not deter from the Office of President. Now no one poet dominates like that, though Billy Collins is close. And Gwendolyn Brooks made up in skill what she lacked in fame.
Read
December 20, 2024DNF. I picked this out because I was flipping through the pages and saw “We Real Cool,” which I read in an English class in probably middle school - a very popular poem because it’s very short (key for middle school success!) and there’s some fun dramatic imagery in there, and then there’s also the critique of the poem as respectability politics etc etc. So I thought it would be worth seeing what else Brooks has written.
I did not enjoy what I read of this. I wouldn’t have expected to need humor in poetry, and I don’t think you need a ton - but this felt humorless. The cadences and spacing/formatting didn’t work, or at least they didn’t work often enough for me.
And, as another reviewer mentions, the early inclusion of an anti-abortion poem was unexpected and not great - I think it’s probably fair to say it started the whole thing off on a bad note.
I did not enjoy what I read of this. I wouldn’t have expected to need humor in poetry, and I don’t think you need a ton - but this felt humorless. The cadences and spacing/formatting didn’t work, or at least they didn’t work often enough for me.
And, as another reviewer mentions, the early inclusion of an anti-abortion poem was unexpected and not great - I think it’s probably fair to say it started the whole thing off on a bad note.
July 31, 2019
I finished this collection of selected poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. I have got the habit now of reading a poem a day, usually before bed. Even more than fiction, a poem takes me out of my own head and into the poet's.
Ms Brooks was a phenom when it came to publishing books of poetry: 19 of them. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, the first Black author to do so. "I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it," she wrote. Her truth comes from her life as a Black woman in America.
She only wrote one novel, Maud Martha, 1953. I liked it so much that for years I was upset she didn't write more novels. I am no longer upset. Her poems are just as good. I hope one day to read all of those 19 books.
So far in my poetry adventure I have read 20th century poets. Now I am ready for the earlier works, the foundations of modern poetry. I have dug out The Standard Book of British and American Verse from my shelves. It begins with Chaucer (1340-1400) and ends with Vita Sackville West (1892-1962). On the advice of Christopher Morley, who wrote the preface, I am reading it back to front, "so that you begin with the contemporary mood and gradually swim towards older words and manners," as he says. It is a huge book, 735 pages. It may take me the rest of my life to read! I feel fine, after Gwendolyn Brooks's rendering of her American experience, about swimming towards earlier beginnings. It is part of what we do as we age.
Ms Brooks was a phenom when it came to publishing books of poetry: 19 of them. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, the first Black author to do so. "I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it," she wrote. Her truth comes from her life as a Black woman in America.
She only wrote one novel, Maud Martha, 1953. I liked it so much that for years I was upset she didn't write more novels. I am no longer upset. Her poems are just as good. I hope one day to read all of those 19 books.
So far in my poetry adventure I have read 20th century poets. Now I am ready for the earlier works, the foundations of modern poetry. I have dug out The Standard Book of British and American Verse from my shelves. It begins with Chaucer (1340-1400) and ends with Vita Sackville West (1892-1962). On the advice of Christopher Morley, who wrote the preface, I am reading it back to front, "so that you begin with the contemporary mood and gradually swim towards older words and manners," as he says. It is a huge book, 735 pages. It may take me the rest of my life to read! I feel fine, after Gwendolyn Brooks's rendering of her American experience, about swimming towards earlier beginnings. It is part of what we do as we age.
January 29, 2011
I don't know how old I was when I first read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks -- 12, maybe 13. I don't know where I even found the poem. But I do remember the specific poem, "a song in the front yard," and I do remember reciting my favorite stanza: "I stayed in the front yard all my life./I want a peek at the back/Where it's rough and unattended and hungry weed grows/A girl gets sick of a rose."
Of course, I didn't know about symbolism or other poetic devices at the time. I just liked the music in her words. And I loved the last line "A girl gets sick of a rose."
I still love Gwendolyn Brooks. I teach "We Real Cool" whenever I can, and many other of her poems have been added to my favorites list. This past year, I made a resolution on my GoodReads reading group to read more collections from "classic" poets. Brooks is one of the poets whose work I know; however, I never read one of her collection in its entirety. That's why I read her Selected Poems published by HarperCollins. This collection offers segments from her many books including A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen and The Bean Eaters. This book also contains a mini biography of Brooks' life along with a tribute by Nikki Giovanni titled "Remembering Gwen." In short, this book offered a great time: a chance to reread old favorites and be introduced to many of Brooks' works I did not know.
Of course, I didn't know about symbolism or other poetic devices at the time. I just liked the music in her words. And I loved the last line "A girl gets sick of a rose."
I still love Gwendolyn Brooks. I teach "We Real Cool" whenever I can, and many other of her poems have been added to my favorites list. This past year, I made a resolution on my GoodReads reading group to read more collections from "classic" poets. Brooks is one of the poets whose work I know; however, I never read one of her collection in its entirety. That's why I read her Selected Poems published by HarperCollins. This collection offers segments from her many books including A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen and The Bean Eaters. This book also contains a mini biography of Brooks' life along with a tribute by Nikki Giovanni titled "Remembering Gwen." In short, this book offered a great time: a chance to reread old favorites and be introduced to many of Brooks' works I did not know.
March 10, 2023
(This is a reread)
The poems by Brooks that get the most attention are the character sketches, the quick pictures of the people she knows and (mostly) loves on the south side of Chicago. That is certainly understandable. Those are my favorites too.
But some of the longer poems merit some close attention from those of us who consider ourselves general readers (of poetry). In those poems she explores themes and ideas that became central to later generations of African-American writers. For instance, here's the end of "Riders to the Blood-red Wrath" which sounds very different than the character poems, and assumes a voice that is almost prophetic:
Democracy and Christianity
Recommence with me.
And I ride ride I ride on to the end--
Where glowers my continuing Calvary.
I,
My fellows, and those canny consorts of
Our spread hands in this contretemps-for-love
Ride into wrath, wraith and menagerie
To fail, to flourish, to wither or to win.
We lurch, distribute, we extend, begin.
The poems by Brooks that get the most attention are the character sketches, the quick pictures of the people she knows and (mostly) loves on the south side of Chicago. That is certainly understandable. Those are my favorites too.
But some of the longer poems merit some close attention from those of us who consider ourselves general readers (of poetry). In those poems she explores themes and ideas that became central to later generations of African-American writers. For instance, here's the end of "Riders to the Blood-red Wrath" which sounds very different than the character poems, and assumes a voice that is almost prophetic:
Democracy and Christianity
Recommence with me.
And I ride ride I ride on to the end--
Where glowers my continuing Calvary.
I,
My fellows, and those canny consorts of
Our spread hands in this contretemps-for-love
Ride into wrath, wraith and menagerie
To fail, to flourish, to wither or to win.
We lurch, distribute, we extend, begin.
June 29, 2018
sadly more like 2.5 ☆
long, rhymed poems just really aren't my thing
long, rhymed poems just really aren't my thing
February 10, 2020
"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 weeds grow.
A girl gets sick of a rose."
From "a song in the front yard" in SELECTED POEMS by Gwendolyn Brooks. Poems written and originally published 1944-1963, this edition by @harperperennial 2006.
This volume gathers poetry from 20+ years of publications by Brooks, the first black Pulitzer Prize winner (1950) and one of the most renowned 20th-century American poets.
The slice-of-life poetry from her early works, "A Street in Bronzeville" and "The Bean Eaters", were my favorites, and as well as her later elegies to some of her favorite poets, Robert Frost and Langston Hughes. There's such power in her words, showing the lives of people in Chicago, Illinois, her life-long home, her activism, and her interpretation of 20th-century events like The Little Rock Nine, and the murder of Emmett Till.
This edition included some fantastic supplemental materials: a biography of Brooks, a commemoration by poet Nikki Giovanni, and the transcript of a radio interview and poetry reading with Studs Terkel from 1961.
From that interview, Brooks' clear and simple message:
"I myself have only tried to record life and interpret it as I have seen it."
I want a peek at the back
Where it's rough and untended and hungry weeds grow.
A girl gets sick of a rose."
From "a song in the front yard" in SELECTED POEMS by Gwendolyn Brooks. Poems written and originally published 1944-1963, this edition by @harperperennial 2006.
This volume gathers poetry from 20+ years of publications by Brooks, the first black Pulitzer Prize winner (1950) and one of the most renowned 20th-century American poets.
The slice-of-life poetry from her early works, "A Street in Bronzeville" and "The Bean Eaters", were my favorites, and as well as her later elegies to some of her favorite poets, Robert Frost and Langston Hughes. There's such power in her words, showing the lives of people in Chicago, Illinois, her life-long home, her activism, and her interpretation of 20th-century events like The Little Rock Nine, and the murder of Emmett Till.
This edition included some fantastic supplemental materials: a biography of Brooks, a commemoration by poet Nikki Giovanni, and the transcript of a radio interview and poetry reading with Studs Terkel from 1961.
From that interview, Brooks' clear and simple message:
"I myself have only tried to record life and interpret it as I have seen it."
May 31, 2024
Gwendolyn Brooks is so good at so many different things. She can write love poems that tug at your heart strings. She can write narrative poems that light a fire in your soul. She can write slice-of-life, observatory poems that rival those of William Carlos Williams (I love me some Carlos, but Brooks has a sharpness and wit that I really love and find lacking in his poetry). All in all, this was some incredible poetry. If you're a big fan of poetry and haven't read much Gwendolyn Brooks, stop whatever you're doing and go read her. 5 stars.
June 15, 2021
I love Brooks. I don't love that publishers are yet to produce a full collection of her poetry. It's tough to track down anything more than "selected" poems collections; the inevitable lacunae always leave me disaffected. I am hopeful that a full collection comes in the next decade. 2020 was full of "decolonize your bookshelf" reading lists, and while I find that language unhelpful, even more unhelpful was that I never saw Brooks crop up on a single one. If one wants poetic, potent portraits of Black America in the 20th century, she's your woman.
Read
December 8, 2023this was really, really cool. and brooks is a triple threat; insightful searing content; an intellectual command of language, meter, and rhyme; and infused with a sly knifey emotional play too.
it was really fascinating how at first glance her style seems plain because her voices can be declarative("People who have no children can be hard") and then like a stanza in i realize i have no idea what she's talking about, or thrusting toward, or if she meant her declarative sentence or if she was being sardonic.
at first blush some of her content comes off as straightforward; such as "The Chicago Defender sends a man to little rock" which has the POV observe that the people of little rock are in fact just like everywhere else, with the kernel of horror that is their violent racism. but even when that's the case her imagery leaves open interpretations, is a joy to unpack ("I saw coiling storm a-writhe / on bright madonnas. And a scythe / of men harassing brownish girls / ... / ... / the loveliest lynchee was our Lord".
by far the most fucked and impactful poem was "a bronzeville mother loiters in mississippi. meanwhile, a mississippi mother burns bacon", a poem that unfolds until you realize it is from the perspective of the woman who accused emmett till of harassing her, and her fear of her husband, her sticky disgusting guilt and fear generally. it's incredible.
anyway i will probably re-read this again, it's definitely very cerebral and every poem required several passes for me to feel like i'd read it; but they all had this addicting quality wherein i also like, wanted to give it several passes until i had read it. loved learning about this v famous poet i'd never come across.
it was really fascinating how at first glance her style seems plain because her voices can be declarative("People who have no children can be hard") and then like a stanza in i realize i have no idea what she's talking about, or thrusting toward, or if she meant her declarative sentence or if she was being sardonic.
at first blush some of her content comes off as straightforward; such as "The Chicago Defender sends a man to little rock" which has the POV observe that the people of little rock are in fact just like everywhere else, with the kernel of horror that is their violent racism. but even when that's the case her imagery leaves open interpretations, is a joy to unpack ("I saw coiling storm a-writhe / on bright madonnas. And a scythe / of men harassing brownish girls / ... / ... / the loveliest lynchee was our Lord".
by far the most fucked and impactful poem was "a bronzeville mother loiters in mississippi. meanwhile, a mississippi mother burns bacon", a poem that unfolds until you realize it is from the perspective of the woman who accused emmett till of harassing her, and her fear of her husband, her sticky disgusting guilt and fear generally. it's incredible.
anyway i will probably re-read this again, it's definitely very cerebral and every poem required several passes for me to feel like i'd read it; but they all had this addicting quality wherein i also like, wanted to give it several passes until i had read it. loved learning about this v famous poet i'd never come across.
January 21, 2024
This is such a beautiful mosaic of writings. Brooks’ diction is vivacious, her cadence is liquid, her tonality bittersweet. I definitely need to re-read this selection and many of the poems a few more times, but I can safely say that Brooks has quickly become my favourite poet.
January 24, 2019
Brooks is such a pleasure to read. Her bold use of lyrical language makes this book one you’ll wanna read out loud.
November 24, 2021
loved some. others kinda went over my head. overall a great reading experience though.
December 26, 2024
Can I make my Goodreads goal? 5 more to go!
I rummaged through my childhood bedroom to find discarded, short books from undergrad that I never read. Crossing this one off! I know I have a degree in it, but like, how do I read poetry, exactly?
I rummaged through my childhood bedroom to find discarded, short books from undergrad that I never read. Crossing this one off! I know I have a degree in it, but like, how do I read poetry, exactly?
November 17, 2024
Beautiful.
August 29, 2025
Very slow, very beautiful. I'm glad I finally got around to reading this gorgeous poetry book.
September 15, 2022
This is a phenomenal collection of poetry. I suspect most of the people reading this blog are familiar with "The Mother," Brooks's poem on abortion, but other favorites of mine include "the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon" and "The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith."
Brooks's formal, classically inspired poems leave me cold, but her poems about African American culture that are written more colloquially resonate with me strongly.
Brooks's formal, classically inspired poems leave me cold, but her poems about African American culture that are written more colloquially resonate with me strongly.
September 6, 2025
j’ose pas mettre 1 étoile pcq c peut-être moi qui suis débile mais j’ai détesté
October 16, 2023
4.25, rounded down. Will update with some favorite poems!
Some of my favorites :
“…
Since a man must bring
To music what his mother spanked him for
When he was two: bits of forgotten hate,
Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts:
The little dream his father humored: the thing
His sister did for money: what he ate
For breakfast—and for dinner twenty years
Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts.
The pasts of his ancestors lean against
Him. Crowd him. Fog out his identity.
Hundreds of hungers mingle with his own,
Hundreds of voices advise so dexterously
He quite considers his reactions his,
Judges he walks most powerfully alone,
That everything is—simply what it is.
…”
- The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
“…
Still- am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright enough to be spilled,
Was my constant back-question- are they clear
On this? Or do I intrude even now?
Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to kill
For them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides to them
In the galley still?
(In a southern city a white man said
Indeed, I’d rather be dead;
Indeed, I’d rather be shot in the head
Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood
Than saved by the drop of a black man’s blood.
…”
- Negro Hero
“…
2
The Certainty we two shall meet by God In a wide Parlor, underneath a Light Of lights, come Sometime, is no ointment now. Because we two are worshipers of life, Being young, being masters of the long-legged stride, Gypsy arm-swing. We never did learn how To find white in the Bible. We want nights Of vague adventure, lips lax wet and warm, Bees in the stomach, sweat across the brow. Now.
3
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate—and change. And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.” Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
…”
- Appendix to the Anniad
“…
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.
…
Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an ice box pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful crash,
And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.
And so forth.Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions are legion.
But reaching is his rule.
…”
- The Womanhood
“…
Tomorrow. . . . Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble. Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.
Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours. It is just that so often they live till their hair is white. They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. . . .
Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people. At least, nobody driving by in this car. It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us How much more fortunate they are than we are.
…”
- Beverly Hill, Chicago
Some of my favorites :
“…
Since a man must bring
To music what his mother spanked him for
When he was two: bits of forgotten hate,
Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts:
The little dream his father humored: the thing
His sister did for money: what he ate
For breakfast—and for dinner twenty years
Ago last autumn: all his skipped desserts.
The pasts of his ancestors lean against
Him. Crowd him. Fog out his identity.
Hundreds of hungers mingle with his own,
Hundreds of voices advise so dexterously
He quite considers his reactions his,
Judges he walks most powerfully alone,
That everything is—simply what it is.
…”
- The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
“…
Still- am I good enough to die for them, is my blood bright enough to be spilled,
Was my constant back-question- are they clear
On this? Or do I intrude even now?
Am I clean enough to kill for them, do they wish me to kill
For them or is my place while death licks his lips and strides to them
In the galley still?
(In a southern city a white man said
Indeed, I’d rather be dead;
Indeed, I’d rather be shot in the head
Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood
Than saved by the drop of a black man’s blood.
…”
- Negro Hero
“…
2
The Certainty we two shall meet by God In a wide Parlor, underneath a Light Of lights, come Sometime, is no ointment now. Because we two are worshipers of life, Being young, being masters of the long-legged stride, Gypsy arm-swing. We never did learn how To find white in the Bible. We want nights Of vague adventure, lips lax wet and warm, Bees in the stomach, sweat across the brow. Now.
3
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate—and change. And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.” Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
…”
- Appendix to the Anniad
“…
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.
…
Life for my child is simple, and is good.
He knows his wish. Yes, but that is not all.
Because I know mine too.
And we both want joy of undeep and unabiding things,
Like kicking over a chair or throwing blocks out of a window
Or tipping over an ice box pan
Or snatching down curtains or fingering an electric outlet
Or a journey or a friend or an illegal kiss.
No. There is more to it than that.
It is that he has never been afraid.
Rather, he reaches out and lo the chair falls with a beautiful crash,
And the blocks fall, down on the people's heads,
And the water comes slooshing sloppily out across the floor.
And so forth.Not that success, for him, is sure, infallible.
But never has he been afraid to reach.
His lesions are legion.
But reaching is his rule.
…”
- The Womanhood
“…
Tomorrow. . . . Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble. Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner.
Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And Sometimes their passings are even more painful than ours. It is just that so often they live till their hair is white. They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. . . .
Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people. At least, nobody driving by in this car. It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us How much more fortunate they are than we are.
…”
- Beverly Hill, Chicago
March 10, 2025
She is so awesome. a poet and storyteller! reading these all together was awesome having read most of the collections included individually before. i read from back to front bc it sounded fun and it was
October 18, 2017
Beautiful poems covering a wide range, and not always beautiful in that way.
Brooks references ballads frequently, sometimes by actually using the word in the title, but sometimes just by writing in a form and vocabulary that sounds like it could be an old ballad of the Irish countryside and they are very pretty.
Then there is this that jumped out at me from Riders to the Blood-red Wrath, about the hold of a slave ship:
"Their retching rampage among their luminous
Black pudding, among the guttural chained slime:"
Not beautiful exactly, but amazing physical and evocative, and still following a kind of a classical form. Then you have We Real Cool, with a shortness and an odd rhythm to it, disjointed in a way that should be halting but it makes everything faster.
Brooks' comfort with multiple forms is admirable, but what seems even more significant for me is a grace and charity with which she treats her subjects. They may not all deserve it. There is some callousness and some deception (self and otherwise) - not everything is admirable. Still, as she observes their dread and grief and strength I never sense contempt in her view.
So even sometimes when the subjects stray from beauty, Brooks brings it along herself.
Brooks references ballads frequently, sometimes by actually using the word in the title, but sometimes just by writing in a form and vocabulary that sounds like it could be an old ballad of the Irish countryside and they are very pretty.
Then there is this that jumped out at me from Riders to the Blood-red Wrath, about the hold of a slave ship:
"Their retching rampage among their luminous
Black pudding, among the guttural chained slime:"
Not beautiful exactly, but amazing physical and evocative, and still following a kind of a classical form. Then you have We Real Cool, with a shortness and an odd rhythm to it, disjointed in a way that should be halting but it makes everything faster.
Brooks' comfort with multiple forms is admirable, but what seems even more significant for me is a grace and charity with which she treats her subjects. They may not all deserve it. There is some callousness and some deception (self and otherwise) - not everything is admirable. Still, as she observes their dread and grief and strength I never sense contempt in her view.
So even sometimes when the subjects stray from beauty, Brooks brings it along herself.
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