Gwendolyn Brooks : The Modernist Poet

Brooks’ poem “The Sonnet-Ballad” follows Stephen Henderson’s idea on what makes a poem “black” in some areas, and not so much in others. Starting with the first component, theme. One of the themes this poem has is helpless. Meaning being targeted and not being able to help yourself. She could not do anything about them taking her lover, and her lover has not choice but to follow death. At the time this poem was written America was still going through civil right movement, so this something at black people could relate to. Black were being targeted and oppressed, and there was not much they could do about it. The next component is structure. This poem that Brooks created is a combination of a sonnet and a ballad. This is what Henderson feels a black poem needs to have, a mode. On thing that Brooks fail on in Henderson’s eye is her form. Brooks does not create this poem to mirror the African American language, or dialect. Brooks also did not do well on the third component either. Brooks does not have much saturation in this poem she created. Even though it does have some themes that African American people can relate to it does not hold up to saturation. It lacks African American refers. In some area Brooks was able follow Henderson’s ideas and in other ways she was not. Henderson may not consider “The Sonnet-Ballad” a “black” poem.

Gwendolyn brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved to Chicago during the great migration when Brooks was six weeks old. Her first poem was published when she was 13 and at the age of 17, she already had a series of poems published in the poetry column “Lights and shadows” in the Chicago defender newspaper. . After working for The NAACP, she began to write poems that focus on urban poor blacks. Those poems were later published as a collection in 1945. The collection was titled A Street in Bronzeville. A street in bronzeville received critical acclaim but it was her next work, Annie Allen, that was got her the Pulitzer Prize. She lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000 at age of 83.

Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet . Her first poem was ,“ Eventide”, :

Sharlet Cannon English 1302-56328 Professor T. Heflin August 9th, 2015 The Mother Abortion, a sensitive topic most people don’t want to talk about or try to figure out ways for it to be out-lawed. " The Mother," a poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks looks at abortion from a mothers’ point of view. This poem deals with the heartfelt emotions that a woman may go through after she has had an abortion. The theme, tone and figures of speech written displays overwhelming regret tormenting her mind.

Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks are regarded as highly influential poets in African American literature, which continues to inspire writers to this day. Langston Hughes is a well-known pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement in which African Americans in Harlem during post World War I and the early 1930’s began a cultural and artistic revolution. During this time, African American musicians, artists, writers, and poets revolutionized their position in and through many artistic fields of expression. This cultural and artistic revolution redefined how America viewed the African American population, which garnered respect and criticism from Americans nationwide. Gwendolyn Brooks, an African American poet also in the 19th century, was introduced to Langston Hughes at a young age peeking her interest in the Harlem Renaissance that eventually became a foundation and influence in her writing. Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes share similarities in the writing as she was highly inspired by Langston Hughes, but also share many differences that are responsible for making their pieces of writing unique to other authors and each other.

Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most celebrated poets and some of her poems have been at the center of academic discussion for many years. One of her most famous poems includes ‘The Boy Died on My Alley’, which will particularly form the center of discussion in this study. The study will focus primarily on the critical analysis that helps to define and to unify the central argument. In addition, the study will also examine some of the aspects that make this poem unique and worthwhile. Moreover, the study will critically analyze the techniques used by the author, the arguments that are central to the piece and how these techniques help to define the importance of the literature.

Gwendolyn Brooks is the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. She has also received a lot of awards and fellowships throughout her life. Born in 1917, she started her writing career in poetry at an early age, publishing her first poem in 1930. 1967 was a turning point in her career as it was in this year that she attended the Fisk University Second Black Writers' Conference. In this conference, she has decided to involve herself in the Black Arts Movement. While awareness of social issues and elements of protest is found generally in all her works, some of her critics found in her work an angrier tone after joining the movement.

There, she started to write at the age of seven and published her first poem at 13. After she completed school, Gwendolyn Brooks found herself working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and continued to write about the struggles of African Americans in her community. During Gwendolyn Brooks’s career she expanded the topic of her writings. Between 1940-1960’s, her writings were about the oppression of blacks and women of all colors in her community, and she poetically criticized the shocking prejudice that African Americans had for one another. However, during 1960’s she developed a new attitude, due to her growing political awareness. She began to expand her poetry from the day-to-day life of the African Americans in her community, to writing about the wider world and the racial struggles of African American people everywhere. She then brought back all of her accomplishments to her community by reading her poems to children at various venues. By the end of her life, she had inspired thousands of young

     Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the

Hughes was a great writer with much diversity in his types of writings. His poetry was a way for us to see a picture of urban life during the Harlem Renaissance, the habits, attitudes, and feelings of his oppressed people. These poems did more than reveal the pain of poverty, it also illustrated racial pride and dignity. “His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience” (Wikipedia, Langston Hughes). Hughes was not ashamed of his heritage and his main theme, “black is beautiful,” was expressed and shared to the world through his poetry. During the literary movement, music was central to the cultural movement of the Harlem Renaissance, which was a main feature of Hughes’s poetry. He had an important technical influence by his emphasis on folk, jazz, and blues rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride. Hughes used this unique style of writing because it was important to him to have the readers feel and experience what they were reading, “to recognize the covert rhetoric in lyric means to appreciate the overlap between emotive and discursive poetry. Rooted in song, the lyric reestablishes the ritual of human communion” (Miller 52).

Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.

Langston Hughes is a famous poet known mostly for his contribution to the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote many inspirational poems that are still read and used for educational purposes. Many of his poems were inspired by his life and his story. One of his many poems entitled “Theme for English B” talks about how his teacher instructed him to write a page about himself and it will be true. In a “Theme for English B”, Hughes uses tone, and characterization to display a relationship between race and writing.

Gwendolyn Brooks was a black poet from Kansas who wrote in the early twentieth century. She was the first black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Her writings deal mostly with the black experience growing up in inner Chicago. This is the case with one of her more famous works, Maud Martha. Maud Martha is a story that illustrates the many issues that a young black girl faces while growing up in a ‘white, male driven’ society. One aspect of Martha that is strongly emphasized on the book is her low self-image and lack of self-esteem. Martha feels that she is inferior for several reasons, but it is mainly the social pressures that she faces and her own blackness that contribute to these feelings of inferiority. It is

Ai, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Kwame Dawes are all contemporary African American poets. Their works often focused on different aspects of the post civil rights movement in the African American community. Ai was known for writing poetry on hard subjects. She was laso known for writing poems that were graphic. Being multiracial, ( 1/2 Japanese, 1/8 Choctaw, 1/4 Black, and 1/16 Irish), many of her poems were based on the complexity of idenity. On the other hand, Kwame Dawes is a Nigerian born man of Jamaican descent. Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American women whose adult years were spent during the civil rights movement.

     Langston Hughes’s writing showcases a variety of themes and moods, and his distinguished career led his biographer, Arnold Rampersad, to describe him as “perhaps the most representative black American writer.” Many of his poems illustrate his role as a spokesman for African American society and the working poor. In others, he relates his ideas on the importance of heritage and the past. Hughes accomplishes this with a straightforward, easily understandable writing style that clearly conveys his thoughts and opinions, although he has frequently been criticized for the slightly negative tone to his works.