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:

    Each body has its art, its precious prescribed
    Pose, that even in passion’s droll contortions, waltzes,
    Or push of pain or when a grief has stabbed,
    Or hatred hacked is its, and nothing else’s.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    I am cold in this cold house this house
    Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
    I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
    I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Rise.
    Let us combine. There are no magics or elves
    Or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must
    Wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot.
    Nothing but a plain black boy.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    He had come down, He said, to clean the earth
    Of the dirtiness of war.
    Now tell of why His power failed Him there?
    His power did not fail. It was that, simply,
    He found how much the people wanted war.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)