Poetry: The Works of Gwendolyn Brooks by Joshua Banfro https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl By: Joshua Banfro en-us 2017-04-01 16:56:37 UTC 2017-10-11 00:22:28 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Pictureland.png Biography ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165196571 Gwendolyn Brooks lived from 1917 to 2000. She spent most of her life in the city of Chicago, where her father was a janitor and her mother, a schoolteacher. Her first poem, "Eventide", was published in the American Childhood newspaper when she was 13. After much experience from junior college and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Brooks began writing poems, such as those in her collection, A Street in Bronzeville, that focused upon the impoverished urban blacks of Chicago. Many of her later poems had a political stance, focusing on the equality and freedoms of colored people. A Virginia Quarterly Review  critic saw these later poems of Brooks as having "raw power and roughness," but Bruce Cook reassured that these poems were "about bitterness", not actually trying to be bitter. At age 68, she was the first black woman appointed as the poetry consultant of the Library of Congress.]]> 2017-04-06 16:29:49 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165196571 Works Cited ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165197915
  • "Gwendolyn Brooks." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017. 
  • Brooks, Gwendolyn. "A Sunset of the City." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017. 
  • Brooks, Gwendolyn. "Young Afrikans." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2017
  • Williams, Kenny Jackson. "Gwendolyn Brooks' Life and Career." Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press., 1997. Web. 06 Apr. 2017. 




    • ]]>     2017-04-06 16:34:21 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165197915     "Boy Breaking Glass" ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165241925 To Marc Crawford
    from whom the commission

    Whose broken window is a cry of art   
    (success, that winks aware 
    as elegance, as a treasonable faith) 
    is raw: is sonic: is old-eyed première. 
    Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament.   
    Our barbarous and metal little man. 

    “I shall create! If not a note, a hole.   
    If not an overture, a desecration.” 

    Full of pepper and light 
    and Salt and night and cargoes. 

    “Don’t go down the plank 
    if you see there’s no extension.   
    Each to his grief, each to 
    his loneliness and fidgety revenge. 
    Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there.” 

    The only sanity is a cup of tea.   
    The music is in minors. 

    Each one other 
    is having different weather. 

    “It was you, it was you who threw away my name!   
    And this is everything I have for me.” 

    Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,   
    the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,   
    runs. A sloppy amalgamation. 
    A mistake. 
    A cliff. 
    A hymn, a snare, and an exceeding sun.
    ]]>     2017-04-06 18:47:41 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165241925     "Boy Breaking Glass" Analysis ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165242678 In this poem, which is implied to be written directly for Marc Crawford from Brooks, she writes of a boy who attempted to express himself artistically by breaking windows. The boy breaking the glass could be seen as him breaking free from the restraints that society put on him. "Whose broken window is a cry of art/(success, that winks aware/as elegance, as a treasonable faith)..." (Brooks, 1-3) The reason that this is seen as treasonable is that society does not want him to have access to these freedoms, as he is a black boy. The theme is that actions must be take for results. In this case, Brooks yet again accentuates the reasons for activism. The glass symbolizes the restraints that society placed upon him, surrounding him on both sides. Brook's experiences with racism in Hyde Park High School may had helped her understand these restraints more. “'It was you, it was you who threw away my name!/ And this is everything I have for me.'”(Brooks,21-22) This restraint is what lead to his rebellion against the injustices of society in the form of breaking glass, both the physical windows and the metaphorical boundaries.]]> 2017-04-06 18:50:27 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165242678 Literary Devices within the Poems ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165244508
    1. metaphor- a comparison without the use of like or as. "Whose broken window is a cry of art..." (Brooks, 1) This broken window was the only thing this boy had to express himself.
    2. alliteration- the repetition of initial consonant sounds. "Who has not Congress, lobster, love, luau,/ the Regency Room, the Statue of Liberty,/ runs." (Brooks, 22-24) The author lists several luxuries that blacks would never experience, all starting with "l".
    3. oxymoron- the combining of contradictory terms or ideas. "Our beautiful flaw and terrible ornament." (Brooks, 5) Flaws often are not seen as pleasant and an ornament is not usually intended to look terrible.
    4. hyperbole- an exaggeration or overstatement. "My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,/ Are gone from the house." (Brooks, 2-3) Brooks belittles herself to a child's toys as her matured children left her as they had left behind their toys of their youth.
    5. ambiguity- a statement that can contain multiple meanings. "My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite..." (Brooks,3) As pleasant is separated from polite by the conjunction "or", this is a deliberate attempt to rule out the mistake of connecting "pleasant" and "polite" as synonyms within this context.
    6. personification- giving human-like qualities to non-human objects or animals. "The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown..." (Brooks, 12) As the figurative summer was ending, the grasses began to turn brown, except Brooks describes it as if a person forgets how to accomplish a certain function.
    ]]>     2017-04-06 18:56:55 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165244508     ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165291436 A head shot of Brooks]]> 2017-04-07 02:08:24 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165291436 "A Sunset of the City" ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165292140 Kathleen Eileen

    Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love. 
    My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls, 
    Are gone from the house. 
    My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite   
    And night is night. 

    It is a real chill out, 
    The genuine thing. 
    I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer   
    Because sun stays and birds continue to sing. 

    It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.   
    The sweet flowers indrying and dying down, 
    The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown. 

    It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.   
    I am aware there is winter to heed.   
    There is no warm house 
    That is fitted with my need. 
    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. 

    Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my   
    Desert and my dear relief 
    Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,   
    And small communion with the master shore.   
    Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,   
    Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry   
    In humming pallor or to leap and die. 

    Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.
    ]]>     2017-04-07 02:16:51 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165292140     ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165293166 The cover of A Street in Bronsezville, one of Brooks' poem collections.]]> 2017-04-07 02:28:06 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165293166 "A Sunset of the City" Analysis ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165296250 This poem focuses on how Brooks had to endure through loneliness. "My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,/ Are gone from the house." (Brooks, 2-3) Brooks' relationship with her parents when she was younger was what was holding them together during their economic struggle; her own family at this point did not care much for her. "It is a real chill out..." (Brooks, 6) The connotation of chill is rather discomforting and unpleasant, but the diction, which is "a depressing influence", shows how alone Brooks felt, establishing a lonely tone. The theme is that life is not always as it seems. "I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer/Because sun stays and birds continue to sing./ It is summer-gone that I see..." (Brooks, 8-10) Contradictions can be found in here: the sun remains visible in the sky for much longer in the summer; the singing birds are also a common signal for summer. The implications of the sun and birds are rather that they create a deceivingly "happy" atmosphere, although this summer lacks the liveliness. The last line of the poem accentuates how other people do not understand the realities in one's life, as someone made a joke out of Brook's serious remark.   "And I incline this ear to tin,/Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry/In humming pallor or to leap and die./Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke." (Brooks, 26-29) This shallowness of the other person proves how corrupt the world is in itself. ]]> 2017-04-07 02:58:38 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165296250 ChristGamer87 https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165301496 Signs regulating laws of segregation]]> 2017-04-07 04:36:14 UTC https://padlet.com/ChristGamer87/7kl7zmas6fhl/wish/165301496