Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet Gwendolyn Brooks

Dies

Brooks' legacy gives solace

Farewell to a poet of her people

'This carrier of the human spirit'

Illinois poet laureate created art from her life

Brooks gave strength to others through her voice

December 4, 2000

She Took Us to Our Literary Mecca: A Tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks

By Daphne Muse

Just in case no one has done so before, I want to remind the world, long

before Chicago had Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan, there was Gwendolyn

Brooks! Many of us recall how her work put us In The Mecca as we traveled A

Street in Bronzeville in search of Maude Martha, gathering with The Bean

Eaters, who in their lifetime, would come to celebrate Winnie.

As a beneficiary of a more than 30-year friendship with Gwendolyn Brooks,

my bank of memories and personal archives are filled with volumes of her

poetry, correspondence and countless pieces of ephemera. While my heart

hangs heavily over her loss, my spirit dances divinely for one of America's

finest poets. With pen in hand and verse in her heart, she died Sunday,

December 3rd in her South side Chicago home one week after being diagnosed

with cancer. She was surrounded by her daughter Nora, poet Haki Madhubuti and

other people she loved.

As she transitions back to spirit, I know she is writing to express her

own indignation poetically demanding an investigation into the ongoing brutal

disenfranchisement of ordinary Black American citizens, about whom she wrote

so eloquently. Her work spanned five decades and is certain to be held in

perpetuity in our hearts and minds, as well as through the works of multiple

generations of poets she mentored. In Spring 2001, her voice will rise again

and span the new century through the publication of her last book - In

Montgomery: New and Other Poems (Third World Press). Starting in 1969 with

Riot, she sustained her commitment to her integrity and continued to place

her work with independent black publishers.

Brooks wore her 1950 Pulitzer Prize, the 1994 National Endowment for the

Humanities Jefferson Lectureship (the highest humanities award given by the

federal government) and her hundreds of other outstanding accolades as she

did her clothes--simply. Through her poetry, presence and uncomplicated

demeanor, she firmly admonished black people not to be clubbed into

submission and to stand tall in their power and honor their truth.

Across from my writing desk hangs a wonderful photograph reminding me how

powerfully her mentoring reach extended. In the photo a lovely and youthful

Brooks is surrounded by the "Jump Badders,"--Carolyn Rodgers, Sharon Scott,

Johari Amini, Mike Cook, Walter Bradford and Haki Madhubuti (Don Lee)--young

Chicago poets she mentored starting in the mid-60's. Along with the voices

of a new generation of slammin' and jammin' poets, some of the more seasoned

voices continue to bloom across the American literary landscape.

We in the Bay Area are especially privileged for her legacy has become

institutionalized through the acquisition of an extraordinary collection of

manuscripts, correspondence and photographs from the Brooks archives recently

acquired by UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library. During the past three decades,

Brooks presented her often lean and sometimes richly textured narrative

through witty and socially compelling poetry at several readings at UC

Berkeley. Just as she did in 1974 at Zellerbach, she packed the house again

in April 1997 and elevated the bar of those gathered to "cook and book with

Ms. Brooks." As each poem flowed effortlessly from her well-orchestrated and

fully engaged voice, she mesmerized teenagers and gave wizened elders even

more to think about. From "When Mrs. Martin's Booker T." and "A Man of the

Middle Class," to "We Real Cool" and "The Womanhood," the almost 1,000 people

gathered in Wheeler auditorium held on to her every ingenious word. Another

700 hundred had been turned away tearfully. After two hours of reading and

with no cessation in her rhythm, she remained another two hours, just before

midnight, and signed each book of the more than 300 people who waited in line

for proud and visionary inscriptions to relatives, friends and themselves.

For her return trip, I presented her with the traditional shoe box. For

those of you who don't know or might have forgotten, there was a time when

black people could not eat in the dining cars of trains. Families and

friends sent us packing with shoe boxes brimming with fresh from the stove

fried chicken, potato salad and right from the oven sweet potato pie that I

can still smell.

Back in 1968, Majorie Holmes, then a critic for the Evening Star (DC)

Newspaper wrote in her review of Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, "...one

of our greatest living poets....Anyone who has a real hunger for poetry ought

to know Gwendolyn Brooks. She is original. Her imagery is startling. She

has a 'beat'...You can march to the music she makes. She grips the strong

stuff of life and squeezes a kind of bloody beauty from it." And until

Sunday, December 3rd, she continued to grip the strong stuff and squeeze a

kind of bloody beauty from a life so well lived.

Daphne Muse is a writer who lives in Oakland, California.

Daphne Muse

2429 East 23rd Street

Oakland, CA 94601-1235

510 436-4716/510 261-6064 (FAX)

[email protected]

Books by Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry

A Street in Bronzeville, 1945

Annie Allen, 1949

Bronzeville Boys and Girls, 1956

The Bean Eaters, 1960

Selected Poems, 1963

We Real Cool, 1966

The Wall, 1967

In the Mecca, 1968

Family Pictures, 1970

Riot, 1970

Black Steel: Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, 1971

The World of Gwendolyn Brooks, 1971

Aloneness, 1971

Aurora, 1972

Beckonings, 1975

Black Love, 1981

To Disembark, 1981

The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems, 1986

Blacks, 1987

Winnie, 1988

Children Coming Home, 1991

Prose

Report from Part One: An Autobiography, 1972

A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing, 1975

Primer for Blacks, 1981

Young Poet's Primer, 1981

Very Young Poets, 1983

Fiction

Maud Martha, 1953

Online Resources

Gwendolyn Brooks - Modern American Poetry

Voices From the Gaps - Women Writers of Color

Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center

7th Annual Literary Festival at Old Dominion University, October 1-4, 1984

Lesson Plan - Gwendolyn Brooks

An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Her Poetry

gwenbrooks.html

"The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till"

Gwendolyn Brooks: A Perspective of Black Life

by Anise Evans

Lanston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.