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:

    Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
    Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
    On such legs as are left me, in such heart
    As I can manage, remember to go home,
    My taste will not have turned insensitive
    To honey and bread old purity could love.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Now who could take you off to tiny life
    In one room or in two rooms or in three
    And cork you smartly, like the flask of wine
    You are? Not any woman. Not a wife.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    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)

    Is light enough when this bewilderment crying against the dark shuts down the shades?
    Dilute confusion. Find and explode our mist.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Shows the old personal art, the look. Shows what
    It showed at baseball. What it showed in school.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)