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:
“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.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“She saw all things except herself serene:
Child, big black woman, pretty kitchen towels.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Pygmies expand in cold impossible air,
Cry fie on giantshine, poor glory which
Pounds breast-bone punily, screeches, and has
Reached no Alps: or, knows no Alps to reach.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“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.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss,
Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks
Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks
In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge
Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)