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:
“The little lifting helplessness, the queer
Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.
And makes a curse.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“This ripe rebuke, this burgeoning affluence
Mocks me and mocks the desert of my bed.”
—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)
“‘My mother is jelly-hearted and she has a brain of jelly:
Sweet, quiver-soft, irrelevant. Not essential.
Only a habit would cry if she should die....’”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“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)