Gwendolyn Brooks

The classic volume by the distinguished modern poet, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, showcases an esteemed artist's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world.

Selected Poems

Discover the most enduring works of legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks—the first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize—in one collectible volume "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. About the American Poets Project Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.

(American Poets Project #19)

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks

Presents a collection of the author's poetry and prose.

Blacks

Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the most accomplished and acclaimed poets of the last century, the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first black woman to serve as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress—the forerunner of the U.S. Poet Laureate. Here, in an exclusive Library of America E-Book Classic edition, is her groundbreaking first book of poems, a searing portrait of Chicago’s South Side. “I wrote about what I saw and heard in the street,” she later said. “There was my material.”

A Library of America eBook Classic

A Street in Bronzeville

The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel

We Real Cool

Elizabeth Alexander

A selection of the influential African-American poet's works reflects her modernist style and includes numerous definitive World War II poems as well as pieces about the social and political upheavals of the 1960s.

A loosely connected series of poems about Annie Allen, a Black girl growing up in Chicago. The first part, "Notes from the Childhood and Girlhood," provides glimpses into Annie's birth, her mother, and her responses to racism, killing, and death. "The Anniad," a mock heroic poem, describes Annie's dreams of a lover who goes to war, returns, marries and leaves her, and finally comes home to die. The last section, "The Womanhood," gives a broader view of Annie's outlook on the world and the things she wants to change in it.

Annie Allen

Contains a long narrative poem reflecting life in Chicago's Negro ghetto and 9 shorter poems based on contemporary figures and events

Poems

In the Mecca

The Bean Eaters

Presents a collection of poems that provide monologues of a variety of voices, including urban children, Winnie Mandela, and Alabama civil rights workers.

In Montgomery, and Other Poems

Call blacks to work together toward their own REAL emancipation.

To Disembark

Thomas Hardy

Gedichte, engl. Selected poems

Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks

From Gwendolyn Brooks, U.S. Poet Laureate and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, and Coretta Scott King Award-winning artist Jan Spivey Gilchrist comes We Are Shining. Marking the 100th birthday of Gwendolyn Brooks, this powerful picture book is a celebration of the diversity of our world. This life-affirming poem is now illustrated for the very first time, with stunning, vibrant images. A story of our shared humanity, Gwendolyn Brooks honors the beauty of our world and the many different people in it. Brooks speaks to all children of the world in this moving poem about acceptance, stressing that every child should have the opportunity for a shining future and offering hope for a better tomorrow.

We Are Shining

A group of poems dedicated to Winnie Mandela, the wife of Nelson Mandela who was the first indigenous leader to hold the office of President of the Republic of South Africa.

Gwendolyn Brooks

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