Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an African-American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Read more about Gwendolyn Brooks:  Biography, Career, Excerpt, Honors and Legacy, Bibliography

Famous quotes by gwendolyn brooks:

    Children, confine your lights in jellied rules;
    Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules;
    Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
    Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    They had supposed their formula was fixed.
    They had obeyed instructions to devise
    A type of cold, a type of hooded gaze.
    But when the Negroes came they were perplexed.
    These Negroes looked like men....
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    And in a soft and fundamental hour
    a sorcery devout and vertical
    beguiled the world.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    She has taken her passive pigeon poor,
    She has buried him down and down.
    He never shall sally to Sally
    Nor soil any roofs of the town.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)