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Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the most highly regarded, highly influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American poetry. She was a much-honored poet, even in her lifetime, with the distinction of being the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize.

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The theme of the poem is that African Americans should be proud of their culture and heritage, and that they have nothing to be ashamed of. Numerous lines demonstrate this theme, such as "YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone," (Brooks, line 57). This quote shows African Americans the importance of pride in their culture. This is a very powerful message for the time, given that people looked down on and disrespected African Americans during the twentieth century. Segregation is the "legal or socially enforced separation of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities from mainstream society" (Daley, p.1), and was very prominent during the twentieth century. What Brooks means with this poem is that African Americans are everywhere in the United States, and that they should not submit to "...white strength..." (Brooks, line 15). The poem has a free form structure. There is no consistent rhyme scheme, or any formal pattern like meter. Each stanza builds upon the theme of African American pride, and the last stanza directly adresses the reader through the word "you".

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The theme of this poem is how war changes people. At the start of the poem its describing how young officers return all shaken up. Once they get back to the States, they are changed people. This poem is structured as a sonnet, Gwendolyn Brooks her self says this. " A sonnet series in off-rhyme, because I felt it was an off-rhyme situation"(Brooks).  Gwendolyn Brooks is explaining how the poem "Gay Chaps At The Bar" is organized. Sonnets are fourteen line poems written in iambic pentameter. The meaning of this poem is to show how wars change people, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Gwendolyn Brooks was asked why she wrote the poem and here is her answer "I wrote it because of a letter I got from a soldier who included that phrase in what he was telling me"(Brooks). That quote shows that the reason for writing this was for a soldier coming back from World War II.

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-Brooks, Gwendolyn. Primer for Blacks. Chicago, IL: Third World Press, 1996. Print.

-Daley, Matthew. "Segregation." American History, ABC-CLIO, 2017, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/261177. Accessed 6 Apr. 2017.

-"Gay Chaps At The Bar by Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks." Gay Chaps At The Bar by Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks - Famous poems, famous poets. - All Poetry. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017.

-"On "Gay Chaps at the Bar"." On "Gay Chaps at the Bar". N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017.

-Pettis, Joyce. "GwendolynBrooks." American History, ABC-CLIO, 2017, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/249454. Accessed 4 Apr. 2017.

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Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Even at a young age, she was writing poems. As a teenager, she showed her poems to famous poets such as Langston Hughes. They were pleased with her writing, and they encourage her to continue. Brooks' first poetry book, A Street in Bronzeville, was published in 1945. Brooks had numerous notable accomplishments in her life. She was awarded with the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1950, and she was the first African American to receive this honor. She can be considered an "urban poet" given her focus on African American culture. Brooks died on December 3, 2000 due to cancer.

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1. Connotation is the association that a word calls to mind in addition to its dictionary meaning. This literary device can be found prominently in the poem "Gay Chap At The Bar". The connotation for "omen"(Brooks, line 14) is foreshadow events and just pretty bad things, but in this case Brooks using omen suggests a different connotation. Omen in this case means a good thing, it is foretelling of what will happen.
2. Personification is when a nonhuman object is given human characteristics. This is prominent in "Gay Chaps At The Bar" when Brooks is talking about death. " No stout/Lesson showed how to chat with death"(Brooks, line 17-18). That quote is demonstrating personification by saying that they were taught how to chat with death. Since death is not human, it was given human characteristics.
3. Imagery is the descriptive language used in literature to recreate sensory relating to sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. This is seen all throughout the poem when talking explaining the feelings of the soldiers returning from battle. "return from the front crying and trembling"
4. Repetition is a technique in which a sound, word, phrase, or line is repeated for emphasis or unity. This is demonstrated in "A Primer For Blacks" with the repetition of the world "blackness" such as in the lines Blackness/stretches over the land/ Blackness..." (Brooks, lines 30-32). "Blackness" is being repeated to emphasize the subject of the poem, which are all the African Americans of that time period.
5. A colloquialism is a word or phrase used every day in plain and relaxed speech but rarely found in formal writing, usually pertinent to a given area. This is demonstrated in "A Primer For Blacks" at the end of the poem with the line "Niggeroes and Niggerenes" (Brooks, line 64). These are words that would never be used in any formal context. However, it is used here to give the reader a sense of familiarity with Brooks. She wrote this poem as a form of advice, but she did not write it while looking down on other African Americans.
6.A symbol is a person, place, or object or activity that stands for something beyond itself. This can be seiin in "A Primer For Blacks" whenver it mentions "blackness", such as in "Blackness/marches on" (Brooks, lines 9-10). Here, "blackness" does not mean the abscence of light. It represents African Americans as a whole and as a single entity.

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Blackness

is a title,

is a preoccupation,

is a commitment Blacks

are to comprehend—

and in which you are

to perceive your Glory.

The conscious shout

of all that is white is

“It’s Great to be white.”

The conscious shout

of the slack in Black is

"It's Great to be white."

Thus all that is white

has white strength and yours.

The word Black

has geographic power,

pulls everybody in:

Blacks here—

Blacks there—

Blacks wherever they may be.

And remember, you Blacks, what they told you—

remember your Education:

“one Drop—one Drop

maketh a brand new Black.”

Oh mighty Drop.

______And because they have given us kindly

so many more of our people

Blackness

stretches over the land.

Blackness—

the Black of it,

the rust-red of it,

the milk and cream of it,

the tan and yellow-tan of it,

the deep-brown middle-brown high-brown of it,

the “olive” and ochre of it—

Blackness

marches on.

The huge, the pungent object of our prime out-ride

is to Comprehend,

to salute and to Love the fact that we are Black,

which is our “ultimate Reality,”

which is the lone ground

from which our meaningful metamorphosis,

from which our prosperous staccato,

group or individual, can rise.

Self-shriveled Blacks.

Begin with gaunt and marvelous concession:

YOU are our costume and our fundamental bone.

All of you—

you COLORED ones,

you NEGRO ones,

those of you who proudly cry

“I’m half INDian”—

those of you who proudly screech

“I’VE got the blood of George WASHington in MY veins”

ALL of you—

you proper Blacks,

you half-Blacks,

you wish-I-weren’t Blacks,

Niggeroes and Niggerenes.

You.

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...and guys I knew in the States, young
officers, return from the front crying and
trembling.  Gay chaps at the bar in Los
Angeles, Chicago, New York...
--Lt. William Couch
in the South Pacific

We knew how to order.  Just the dash
Necessary.  The length of gaiety in good taste.
Whether the raillery should be slightly iced
And given green, or served up hot and lush.
And we knew beautifully how to give to women
The summer spread, the tropics of our love.
When to persist, or hold a hunger off.
Knew white speech.  How to make a look an omen.
But nothing ever taught us to be islands.
And smart, athletic language for this hour
Was not in the curriculum.  No stout
Lesson showed how to chat with death.  We brought
No brass fortissimo, among our talents,
To holler down the lions in this air.