Fuck Yeah, Gwendolyn Brooks

A blog in celebration of the life and works of the inimitable Gwendolyn Brooks.

[countingthesea]

Let it be alleys. Let it be a hall Whose janitor javelins epithet and thought To cheapen hyacinth darkness that we sought And played we found, rot, make the petals fall. Let it be stairways, and a splintery box Where you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss, Have honed me, have released me after this Cavern kindness, smiled away our shocks. That is the birthright of our lovely love In swaddling clothes. Not like that Other one. Not lit by any fondling star above. Not found by any wise men, either. Run. People are coming. They must not catch us here Definitionless in this strict atmosphere.

Gwendolyn Brooks

[sourcedumal]

Gwendolyn Brooks

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

[Image: inspirational Black woman meme. Top text: "published first poem at 13" bottom text: "became the poet laureate for the US library of congress."]

I think she was also the first Black person to win a Pulitzer for Annie Allen in 1949.

Fuck yeah.

[fuckkyeahchicago]

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

fuckkyeahchicago:

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks on her back porch. Chicago, 1960. Photo by Slim Aarons.

we jazz june, we die soon

submission from gamsorama

[howtheinternetruinedmylife-deac]

We Real Cool

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

hotwaterymess:

howtheinternetruinedmylife:

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. (by Gwendolyn Brooks)

I will always reblog gwendolyn brooks.  i love this poem.  i love the we at the end of the line and the way it drives the poem forward to the ending.

I really, really wish that people would post other poems besides this one on the "gwendolyn brooks" tag. But yes. This is lovely.

I don't know if you've heard a recording of Brooks actually reading this poem, but she does pay a lot of attention to the enjambment and always makes the "we" emphatic and sharp ("we/reeeeeeeal cooool we/left schoooool"). It's awesome. It totally confers a feeling of group identity, no matter how destructive. And so, it's kind of scary.

[babyzoloft-blog]

X

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

parisoutthebackdoor:

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this disguise.

—Gwendolyn Brooks

From Annie Allen.

[ahuntersheart]

I am tired of little tight-fisted poems sitting down to shape perfect unimportant pieces. Poems that cough lightly — catch a sneeze. This is the time for Big Poems roaring up out of the sleaze, poems from ice, from vomit, and from tainted blood.

from Winnie by Gwendolyn Brooks (via ahuntersheart)

Gwendolyn Brooks is often said to have gone through two phases in her writing: the first was largely based on European poetic traditions (though I would say that her work was very singular and generally an improvement of those traditions, which a lot of literary critics seem to overlook (think "The Sonnet Ballad")), and a second, more oratory and didactic phase (like "Speech to the Young").

[theoryoflostthings]

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment. You need not die today. Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

Gwendolyn Brooks, To the Young Who Want to Die (via holdonmagnolia)

[angrierangel-deactivated2011060]

Gil Scott-Heron, by Gwendolyn Brooks

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

angrierangel:

Chance-taker Emotion voyager Street-strutter Contemporary Spirit Untamed Proud Poet Rough Healer He is His.

Rest in peace.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon

I Think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No. Despite The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.

Picture Jehovah striding through the hall Of His importance, creatures running out From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout Appreciation of His merit’s glare.

But who walks with Him?––dares to take His arm, To slap Him on the shoulder, tweak His ear, Buy Him and Coca-Cola or a beer, Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool?

Perhaps––who knows––He tires of looking down. Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight. Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great In solitude. Without a hand to hold.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

the sonnet-ballad

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man hesitate—and change. And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.” Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

The Anniad (excerpt)

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Think of sweet and chocolate, Left to folly or to fate, Whom the higher gods forgot, Whom the lower gods berate; Physical and underfed Fancying on the featherbed What was never and is not.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

downtown vaudeville

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

What was not pleasant was the hush that coughed When the Negro clown came on the stage and doffed His broken hat. The hush, first. Then the soft

Concatenation of delight and lift, And loud. The decked dismissal of his gift, The sugared hoot and hauteur. Then, the rift

Where is magnificent, heirloom, and deft Leer at a Negro to the right, or left— So joined to personal bleach, and so bereft:

Finding if that is locked, is bowed, or proud. And what this is at all, spotting the crowd.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. In the Mecca. (via fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks)

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Kitchenette Building

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not   strong Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in, Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Boy Breaking Glass

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

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 premiere. 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.”

When 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.

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Most young people know me only by that poem. I don’t mean that I dislike it, but I would prefer it if the textbook compilers and the anthologists would assume that I’d written a few other poems. I wrote it because I was passing by a pool hall in my community one afternoon during school time and I saw therein a little bunch of boys—I say here in this poem seven—and they were shooting pool. But instead of asking myself, “why aren’t they in school?” I asked myself, “I wonder how they feel about themselves…”

Gwendolyn Brooks on “We Real Cool.” (via fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks)

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward

[fuckyeahgwendolynbrooks]

Say to them, say to the down-keepers, the sun-slappers, the self-soilers, the harmony-hushers, “even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.” You will be right. For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won Not for the end-of-the-song Live in the along.